Art in the view of the beholder

Shanti Panchal is an extraordinary Indian artist who has just won Britain's top self-portrait competition named after Ruth Borchard (1910-2000), an extraordinary Jewish woman.

What is worth narrating is how the arc of Ruth's life and that of 64-year-old Shanti - who was born in Gujarat, studied at the Sir JJ School of Art in Bombay and came to Britain in 1978 on a British Council scholarship - crossed in London a few days ago.

Ruth, born near Hamburg on February 10, 1910, married businessman Kurt Borchard in 1937, fled Nazi Germany in 1938 and settled in Reigate, Surrey, where the couple had four children.

She became a prolific author but also started collecting self-portraits by young artists - among them the Indian Francis Newton Souza - but restricting herself to a budget of 21 guineas (a guinea is 21 shillings in old money) for each work. After her death in 2000, the biennial Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Prize, worth £10,000, was started by her family to bring out the "best of contemporary self-portraiture".

This year's prize was the third, with Shanti chosen the winner near unanimously out of about 1,000 entries by a distinguished judging panel that included art critics of the Financial Times and The Observer newspapers and Charles Saumarez Smith, chief executive of the Royal Academy of Arts. The panel also included Ruth's granddaughter, Dr Ruth Hallgarten, who handed Shanti his prize.

His winning entry, Artist and the Lost Studio, was purchased for the Ruth Borchard "second generation" collection for £15,000.

"A tribute to the studio that Shanti built, and worked in for decades before losing it earlier this year, the painting is beautiful realised in watercolour, subtly moving and haunting," the judges said.

Shanti, who uses only watercolours but applies them layer upon layer on special paper, tells me: "I work with young people and some of the Asian kids are very talented but the parents will not allow them to do art."

"There was this Shah girl, from a Jain family, but her parents said 'No'," he recounts sadly.

If this goes on, I will have to encourage Gurinder Chadha to make a new movie, "Paint It Like Panchal".

Atul's cure

Whatever happens after the UK government's "review" of the BBC, I am sure the annual Reith Lectures will continue.

They were delivered last year on "the future of medicine" by Indian-American celebrity surgeon and author Atul Gawande.

He describes the selection of Prof. Stephen Hawking to deliver the 2015 Reith Lectures on the subject of black holes as "a coup".

Atul enjoyed giving his four lectures: "I've never reached anything like the tens of millions of listeners that the BBC Reith Lectures let me reach."

For Atul, most of the past 12 months have "been devoted to leading the centre for health systems innovation I founded in 2012, called Ariadne Labs. We are doing some of the work I talked about in the lectures, developing scalable solutions for better care in childbirth, in surgery, at the end of life, and other critical moments in people's lives. Some of the innovations are as simple as a checklist."

Mamata Banerjee should invite Atul da to put a stethoscope to healthcare in Calcutta, especially to R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital.

Summer sizzler

Celeb chef Andy Varma now runs Chakra, an Indian restaurant, in Notting Hill with his younger brother Arjun. However, the boys would much rather be playing tennis, a sport they have loved from their days frequenting the Calcutta South Club where they were in awe of legendary figures from yesteryear.

Andy also assures me that Calcutta is the natural home of Indian tennis.

Back in 2003, my first Wimbledon, it was Andy who had introduced me to a shy 16-year-old girl: "This is Sania."

Sania Mirza won the girls' doubles, when Andy had cheered for her. A few days ago Andy again cheered her on. But the poor man's nerves were very nearly shattered when Sania and Martina Hingis had to come back from the dead to take the women's doubles.

"Afterwards I rang up Sania's mum and told her I was very proud of her," said Andy, who is planning a party to celebrate an exceptionally sunny Indian summer at Wimbledon.

Personality notes

The British government's secret files on India from 1984, released by the National Archives, make gripping reading. Margaret Thatcher was given confidential present tense "personality notes" on prominent Indians by Peter Ricketts, private secretary to the foreign secretary, as she flew to India to attend Indira Gandhi's funeral.

She learnt President Zail Singh's "command of English is poor" while vice-president R. Venkataraman was "strictly vegetarian (no eggs)".

Regarding Pranab Kumar Mukherjee, finance minister, "nobody has any allusions... about his independence of spirit; he is very much Mrs Gandhi's man".

Mohammad Hamid Ansari, chief of protocol since 1980, gets loyalty points since he "has generally been helpful to the High Commission".

We learn that Swraj Paul enjoyed "excellent access to Mrs Gandhi and her son, Rajiv, to the point where he has been dubbed as an 'alternative High Commissioner in London'".

And Rajiv Gandhi, who had become prime minister, had "married Sonia, an Italian girl... She is good looking, quiet and... not interested in politics".

Shuchita shocker

The Home Office's cavalier treatment of Shuchita Sonalika, the Confederation of Indian Industry's director and head of its UK office in London, is inexplicable.

A Home Office spokesperson said: "We have spoken to Ms Sonalika about options to regularise her immigration position and stand ready to consider any application from her."

But even after a year, her visa has not been regularised, even though she is trying to bring jobs and investment from India into the UK. Instead, after attending the recent CBI-CII conference on India, Shuchita had to fly back to Delhi last week. Her belongings from Washington sit in a container.

I cannot understand why Sir James Bevan, British high commissioner in Delhi, or Kumar Iyer, Britain's deputy high commissioner in Mumbai and director-general of UKTI India, are unable to resolve a very silly state of affairs.

It so happens Iyer spoke at the London conference when he said: "We have a concerted programme to encourage UK students to study in India because any good relationship needs to be two way."

Hello, Kumar, "two way" means sorting out Shuchita's stay. The Confederation of British Industry folk are happy ensconced in Delhi.

Tittle tattle

Another excellent speaker at the London conference was John Cridland, the CBI's director-general, who announced: "The inaugural CBI Indian banquet will take place in London on September 17."

The black tie affair "to celebrate our thriving business relationship" will be held in the grand setting of the Mansion House in partnership with the CII and Infosys.

The relationship would be a lot more equitable if Shuchita's visa is sorted out.

Incidentally, Cridland revealed he read history as an undergraduate at Christ's College, Cambridge, when he took a special paper in "19th century Rajasthan".

He thinks India is just right for UK investment: "What an opportunity for British business!"

It is worth stressing that only the British, who built Calcutta, can help rebuild the city.