East meets West: Ayub Khan-Din and Kristine Landon-Smith

How East won the West

The Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square, London, is marking its 50th anniversary through readings of some of the landmark plays it has launched. One was East is East.

“The search for theatre that is original, contemporary and challenging is as urgent as ever,” says the Royal Court. “Every new theatre now invests in new writing as a key aspect of its programming.”

Quite often I find myself wishing theatre could have as important a role in India.

Had England been India, someone would have by now written a two-hander based around the Sourav-Greg affair (the couple could have sat side by side on First Night, holding hands in platonic friendship) or the Ash/ Salman/ Vivek/ Abhishek love quadrangle (if the actors were to play themselves, a hit would be assured).

George Devine’s founding of the Royal Court in 1956 is described by the Royal Court, with typical theatrical understatement, as “a key moment in the history and development of modern British drama”. One of the first plays in 1956 was John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger.

It is hard to credit that 10 years have passed since East is East, possibly the best play written over the past decade, premiered at the Birmingham Rep. The Royal Court’s contribution was to help the writer, Ayub Khan-Din, rescue an early draft of the play from a dusty drawer and polish it via a process of workshops into a version that could be put on stage. It was a huge hit and later made into a film, which wasn’t quite as good.

Ayub set his autobiographical play in Salford, near Manchester, where he had grown up in the 1970s in a family of nine brothers and one sister, the off-spring of a working class Pakistani immigrant who had married a local Englishwoman. Last week, most members from the Tamasha Theatre Company’s original cast gathered at the Royal Court for a reading of the play. The role of 14-year-old Sajjid had been played in 1996 by Imran Ali, then 17. He is now all of 27 and has fashionable blond streaks in his hair and an Asian babe on his arm.

“Six separate productions are being staged at the moment,” said Ayub, now the father of two young daughters and about to move to Spain with his wife. “The one country where it’s not been performed is India.”

Occasionally, he feels like changing the odd word but he should emulate the example of Oscar Wilde, who, when invited by a bunch of students in America to trim a few lines, sent back a telegram: “Who am I to tamper with a masterpiece?”

FOOD value: Gardenia, the Greek restaurant; (below) Monica Bellucci

Love rules

While Jagmohan Mundhra waits to see if the Cannes Film Festival’s vetting committee accepts his Provoked, starring Aishwarya Rai, in competition, he has been a busy boy, checking out locations in Cambridge for his ?10 million movie on the Sonia-Rajiv love story.

The director promises there will be no soft porn on this one: “No sex, it’s a kosher love story. She came to India for the love of a man, and stayed for the love of its people.”

Sonia Gandhi’s clearance is not necessary but it would help if she gave the project her blessings.

He would like the Italian actress Monica Bellucci to play Sonia but it all depends whether she likes the script and the money offered. She has to age 40 years during the course of the movie.

Last weekend, while my wife and I were in Cambridge, we popped into the Gardenia, a modestly priced Greek restaurant in Rose Crescent well known for its crinkly chips, which I believe Sonia Maino and Rajiv Gandhi used to frequent.

I must say I am impressed with Jag’s reconnaissance trips during which he has meticulously uncovered the Sonia-Rajiv trail in Cambridge. In between romancing Sonia, Rajiv found little time for such mundane pursuits as an exploration of Natural Sciences. So, getting his priorities right, he just didn’t bother. Occasionally, the couple had visits from Sanjay Gandhi who motored down from Derby where he had an apprenticeship with Rolls-Royce.

Actually, instead of trying to squeeze 40 years into two hours, Jag could make a bitter-sweet film concentrating on the Sonia-Rajiv interlude at Cambridge. Whatever else one might say, theirs was one of the great love stories of our time.

Remember the Oscar-winning Love Story, starring Ali MacGraw and “preppie” Ryan ’Neal?.

Word power: Poet Mahmood Jamal

Poet’s corner

The poet, Mahmood Jamal, who was born in Lucknow in 1948, came to Britain from Pakistan in 1967 and later worked in television, memorably translated Faiz Ahmad Faiz from Urdu (“Do not ask of me, my love,/ that love I once had for you.”)

He says: “Of all the arts, poetry is the least marketable commodity. Because of that, it remains immune from the commercial world. But audiences for live poetry have grown over the past five years.”

In Mahmood’s latest collection, Sugar-Coated Pill: Selected Poems (Word Power Books, Edinburgh), I especially liked the one called Objectivity:

On a dark night

Only when you turn the light out

In your room

Can you see beyond the window pane.

His story

Narindar Saroop, the first Asian to be adopted as a Tory parliamentary candidate in the 20th century ? his great uncle was Sir Chottu Ram, the great Punjab aristocrat ? has written an amusing autobiographical tale, The Last Indian: The Destruction of Two Cultures.

He could just as easily have described himself as “the last Englishman”, for Narindar has always believed in the good manners and breeding associated with a now apparently vanished England.

He once described himself to me as “an Englishman of Punjabi extraction who sits on a tiger skin rug, wearing a monocle, eating chicken tandoori and humming God Save the Queen ? gentlemen always hum, they never whistle.”

Possibly, he was a little ahead of his time. Narindar founded the Anglo-Asian Conservative Society and the Durbar Club for Indian and Pakistani millionaires in Britain, before the Tories fully understood the power of the Asian bloc vote.

His is a very readable account of the complicated India-England relationship, viewed through his own life (in Calcutta, he was recruited by Andrew Yule & Co).

Over the years, Narindar has inhabited the world of English gentlemen’s clubs where he heard this typical exchange between upper class chaps:

“Hello Robert, I hear you’ve been to New York?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see my ex-wife there?”

“Yes.”

“Did you take her out to dinner?”

“Yes.”

“Did you take her to bed?”

“Yes.”

“My dear chap, come and have a drink.”.

Tittle tattle

Spare a thought for 17-year-old Edward Armstrong, an all rounder included in the cricket team from Worth School in West Sussex about to tour Bangalore and Calcutta.

Providing helpful tips from the boundary ropes will be the school’s headmaster, Peter Armstrong, who is keen for boys from India to come to Worth (“? 100,000 for the full five years but scholarships are available for clever boys from modest backgrounds”).

“Edward is my son,” admits Peter, who denies being a pushy parent. “My wife is also coming out.”