SWEET NOTHINGS: Angad with wife Michelle

Of photo ops and wedding vows

When I came out of Lord Swraj Paul?s party, I found it just a little embarrassing to walk past a group of paparazzi photographers who had not been allowed in. This is because I am normally on their side of the barrier, ready to jot down witty quotes from the rich and famous.

To be sure, there were a lot of them at Lancaster House where Swraj had thrown his party to mark the wedding of his youngest son, Angad, 34, to media lawyer Michelle Bonn. The party made Page 3 of the Evening Standard the next day.

The first guest I noticed was former home secretary David Blunkett. I just hoped that Indian mothers were warning their pretty daughters to chew garlic, wear a cross and generally steer clear of the frisky Mr Blunkett.

Also there was Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, who had an affair with his House of Commons secretary, Gaynor, who was now present as the second Mrs Cook.

?When you marry your mistress,? the late Sir James Goldsmith, father of Jemima Khan, once observed, ?you create a vacancy.?

Keith Vaz, the MP for Leicester East, was at the party, too. I wonder if Blair is planning to parachute him into Delhi as the next British high commissioner to India, just as he is sending Paul Boateng, a Cabinet minister, as British high commissioner to South Africa if Labour wins the election.

Blair himself didn?t come but the next most important man in the government did ? Gordon Brown, chancellor of the exchequer and possibly the next Prime Minister.

After Swraj had made his speech, heaping praise on Brown as the ?architect? of the successful British economy, Gordon responded, reminding guests that, unlike Swraj and Aruna who had been married for 48 years, ?I myself came to marriage rather late?.

Brown hasn?t had too many affairs. He was accompanied by Sarah Macaulay, a long time girlfriend whom he married in August, 2000.

Aruna told me later that when she first met Swraj, ?I was already engaged. When I got married, he (her former fianc?) wept on Swraj?s shoulders for days afterwards,? the lady of Calcutta now known as Lady Paul of Marylebone added cheerfully.

Premature end

Obituary notices in British newspapers are always fascinating to read and Michael Booton, a 57-year-old man in the West Midlands, took a close interest in them.

In fact, when sleuths nabbed him, as we like to say in India, he had no fewer than 86 separate obituaries in his possession.

His party trick was to track down the addresses of those who had recently died, befriend a bereaved member of the family, gain their confidence and hopefully entry to their property and then rob them.

When he was arrested on October 21 last year at a house in West Bromwich, he was carrying the contents of two homes he had burgled. In court, Booton pleaded guilty to six burglaries.

Where he is going, he will have time to read obituary notices at even greater leisure.

Silly season

In the ?silly season?, when hard news is sparse, newspapers tend to revive the old favourites. One is for people to spot huge black cats, possibly a panther escaped from some zoo or an illegal private collection, in their back gardens. Such sightings usually take place in the west country, very far from London. One has been nicknamed the ?Beast of Bodmin Moor?.

Now, in my very para in south London, a man was attacked at 2.15 am last Monday by a dark ?puma-like animal? the size of a Labrador dog.

The victim, Anthony Holder, 36, a former soldier turned DJ, displayed scratches on his face and fang marks on his hand and recounted how he had gone out into his garden when he heard his cat screeching. He thought it had been attacked by an urban fox.

Instead, like something out of The Hound of the Baskervilles, he was knocked down by a marauding animal ?6ft long and 3ft high?.

?It?s face was so close I could smell its breath,? Holder said later.

He also said it was just as well he had military training because just as the beast ? he suspects it was a panther ? was about to sink its teeth into his neck, he grabbed it by the throat.

?Then I got the thing off my chest,? he added.

Police and an ambulance were called after the animal escaped.

The next evening when I went out for a walk in the dark it occurred to me that whatever it was could still be lurking anywhere in the undergrowth. It is probably even more frightened than local people which will make it doubly dangerous if cornered.

What you don?t expect in London is to be mauled by one of Bagheera?s cousins.

STARRY PATH: Hrithik Roshan

Speak easy

Pavan K. Varma, director of the Nehru Centre, is getting a lot of play for his book, Being Indian. BBC Radio 4 has trailed he will be on a discussion programme in the coming week, and the Sunday Times carried a review (?Is this country on the brink of world domination??) by Maria Misra, an Oxford historian.

She believes Pavan believes that Indians, in contrast to what they pretend to be, are ?selfish, money-obsessed, power-worshipping, anti-egalitarian and amoral?.

To help the British understand alleged Indian hypocrisy better, it is worth producing a glossary showing that like Alice in Wonderland, Indians use words to mean what they want them to mean:

I would never ask an actress to do what she doesn?t want to do but his is a big Bollywood-British Asian collaboration ? Do you really, really want this role?

Money means nothing to me ? How much?

My daughter has decided not to go to Oxbridge, she has decided to do media studies instead at Westminster University ? Bastard Oxbridge turned her down.

God has been kind to me ? I am filthy rich and getting richer.

I am a simple man with simple tastes ? The taps in the bathroom are real gold.

I know Hrithik personally ? I once saw him in the distance at a Ramola Bachchan party.

I live between Mumbai, London and LA ? I managed to get a three-month visa for UK and a month for the US, but we share a one-room flat just outside Mumbai, only an hour by suburban train.

Need not mention ? How are you going to return this favour?

You are like my daughter only, your father stayed with me when he first came to England ? You are young enough to be my daughter but, what the hell, my wife is away.

POLLS APART: Narendra Modi

Tittle tattle

Last time he came to London, Narendra Modi got three standing ovations when he addressed fellow Gujaratis at a huge meeting in Wembley, which is well on the way to being renamed Modinagar. If he doesn?t get four standing ovations this time, his trip will be deemed a failure.

Incidentally, there will be a vacancy in Brent South, a heavily Gujarati constituency in north London whose MP, Paul Boateng, is standing down. Should Modi choose to run, he would win hands down, so great is his following among the Gujarati community in Britain. Which is a little worrying.