STORMY DAYS: Bandra seafront

A high wind in Bandra

Breeze blowing through trees, ruffling leaves, is something I have always liked, so it was utterly idyllic seeing palm trees swaying in a strong wind along the Bandra seafront. One last walk was an indulgence I allowed myself last month before catching Air India’s afternoon flight back to London.

“A High Wind in Bandra,” might be a nice title for a novel, I thought, plagiarising Richard Hughes’s A High Wind in Jamaica. And I also recalled Dom Moraes’s lovely poem, “My native city rose from sea?” (it was just like Dom to pretend to forget the words so that I had to recite back what he had once written).

As I climbed back up the hill, I noticed the garland of flowers adorning the crucifix opposite Mount Mary Church. How typical of India to accept, Indianise and embrace everything, including Christi- anity.

A couple of days previously, a friend, Bomsi, had, at my request, taken me on a Churchgate-Bandra train so we could keep an appointment in the Bandra-Kurla Complex. Much quicker than getting a taxi, he said. Though it was mid-afternoon, the first class compartment filled up in no time at all.

“This is nothing,” grinned Bomsi. “You should be here at six. I challenge you that you won’t be able to get from your seat to the door.”

I thought of that little train journey when I heard the news. The bomb had gone off on the very platform where we had alighted. This had got personal. As a consequence, I am coming round to the view that for India, attack might well be the best form of attack. But who to attack when the enemy is unknown and unseen?

What Bandra, Mahim, Matunga and other parts of the city are going through is the agony London experienced on July 7, 2005. This year, on the first anniversary of the attacks on three Underground trains and the bus, the British marked the tragedy in a quiet and dignified way. Though the suicide bombers were home grown Muslims, primed by their controllers to fight a jihad on behalf of Islam, there has been no backlash to speak of. Not yet, anyway. We have seen the British at their best.

We have had one or two small groups of Hindu troublemakers who are trying to drive a wedge between Hindus and Muslims by arguing that Indians no longer want to be called “Asians” and they would much rather be known as “Hindus”. It is dangerous nonsense, of course, to define any group solely with religious tags.

Before India acts ? and act it must this time ? we have to know who was responsible. Scotland Yard’s offer of help with “crime scene reconstruction”, made by assistant commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, should be accepted forthwith. I was astonished to see a BBC camera crew within touching distance of a wrecked train. In marked contrast in London, police kept all evidence on mangled trains under wraps for months.

HOWZZAT: Muhammad H. Habib (left) and Gulam Noon (right) with Fazal Mahmood’s portrait

Cricket unity

On the day before the Mumbai bombs, 20,000 Indians and Pakistanis packed the Oval for a charity match which raised ?250,000 for victims of last year’s Pakistani earthquake in which an estimated 80,000 people were killed (Mumbai times 400 to get the scale into perspective).

There was no trouble. It is remarkable just how well Indians and Pakistanis get on in Britain.

In the Pakistan Room, which will be opened officially later this summer, a portrait of the legendary Fazal Mahmood looked down on Indian and Pakistani guests who had been invited to take tea by my host, Muhammad H. Habib, joint president of Habib Bank AF Zurich.

Habib, unusually, has contributed to both the India and Pakistan rooms ? ?38,000 to the former and ?50,000 to the latter.

His family, once settled in Bombay, moved to Pakistan after Partition.

“I belong to both sides,” he said simply, as he stood with Indian Sir Gulam Noon, the food entrepreneur (who is making headlines in Britain because it has emerged he was told not to declare the ?250,000 loan he had made to the Labour Party after being nominated for a peerage).

“Cricket diplomacy is working to improve relations between the two countries,” enthused Raj Singh Dungarpur, who was manager of the Indian side that toured Pakistan earlier this year.

Beaming beside him was Shahryar M. Khan, the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, who claimed: “No country has closer links with the Oval than Pakistan. This is where we won our first overseas match in 1954 when Fazal Mahmood took 12 for 99.”

ON A ROLL: Kartar Lalvani

Bhuj bound

Rusheymead School in Nagore village, six miles from Bhuj, formally opens tomorrow, thanks to ace BBC cameraman Bhasker Solanki, who went to cover the Gujarat earthquake in 2001 and realised “I was privileged and I could help”.

The Rusheymead Foundation, a charity linked to Rusheymead School in Leicester ? this has over 1,200 mostly Asian pupils ? raised ?40,000. Before rushing off from his home in Leicester in a party of 24 for the school’s opening function, Bhasker told me: “We registered the charity with the support of Aamir Khan, and Gulshan Grover came to Leicester to help with fundraising. The villagers have wanted a secondary school for 30 years.” It took an earthquake and Bhasker to get one.

GOOD SAMARITAN: Bhasker Solanki

Tittle tattle

Brian Lara (32) looked decidedly frisky when opening the batting with Sachin Tendulkar (50 no) for an International XI in their 10 overs a side charity match against Pakistan at the Oval. But what was the reason for the spring in the West Indian’s step? Kartar Lalvani, founder of Vitabiotics, the company which manufactures vitamins and other health supplements, revealed: “For the last three months, he has been taking my Wellman pills.”