BLAST FROM THE PAST: Great Expectations

What the Dickens is going on?

In solidarity with my niece in Calcutta who is studying Great Expectations at school for her ISC — perhaps I will be able to encourage her teacher to do more to enthuse her pupils than just dish out a few notes — I popped into Heffer’s in Cambridge last week and bought a copy of this Charles Dickens classic.

It is also my intention to draw the attention of Mr Vishal Bhardwaj to the possibilities of adapting Great Expectations for Bollywood after his experiments with Omkara, his version of Othello which seems to be doing rather better in the UK than in India.

For a start, he, like me, could be inspired by listening to the adaptation of Great Expectations in three parts, each an hour long, that is currently being broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

Part one has begun with Pip, an orphaned boy, finding himself terrified out of his wits on Christmas Eve by an escaped convict, Magwitch, whom he chances upon on the Kent marshes but to whom he shows kindness by providing him with a file and some food.

It ends with Pip, who has been bequeathed a large legacy by an anonymous source, leaving his employment as a blacksmith’s apprentice and heading for London to learn to be a “gentleman”.

He assumes his benefactor is Miss Havisham (played by the famous Janet Suzman), an important character in the story, but much later Pip will discover it is none other than the convict.

Bollywood couldn’t come up with a more melodramatic twist.

Great Expectations has been produced and directed for radio by Marilyn Imrie, who thoughtfully rang me from the middle of a thunderstorm in Italy to say that she had previously directed two other Dickens novels, Nicholas Nickleby, and her personal favourite, David Copperfield.

“On Radio 4, a year won’t go by without a major Dickens adaptation,” she pointed out.

The BBC had a huge hit earlier this year with a television adaptation of Bleak House.

“I have always loved Dickens,” added Marilyn. “If you are studying English literature without reading Dickens, George Eliot or Thackeray (a reference presumably to William rather than our Bal) you are kidding yourself.”

Audiences not only in India but everywhere would be able to sympathise with Pip in Great Expectations, a vain young man with social ambitions but who feels dreadfully guilty when he gets rid of modestly placed relatives when they come to visit him.

Perhaps the lesson is that you cannot get on in life until you understand yourself.

If Marilyn was teaching Great Expectations in India — I hope teachers are paying attention — she would stress that this is a tale told from a child’s point of view.

“It’s been an absolute joy doing Great Expectations,” said Marilyn.

ROOTING FOR THE ROOTS: The cover of The Calcutta KitchenIRON LADY: Margaret Thatcherwhile my guitar gently weeps: Paul McCartney

Gourmet’s delight

Two authors, Simon Parkes, a journalist who works for BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme, and Udit Sarkhel, one of the most respected Indian chefs in Britain, have combined to produce a timely book on Bengali cuisine called The Calcutta Kitchen (published by Mitchell Beazley; £20).

Although Britain has an estimated 8,000 curry houses, genuine Bengali food, which the book celebrates, has been conspicuous by its complete absence, save in Udit’s Calcutta Notebook, a small restaurant which adjoins Sarkhel’s Indian Cuisine, his larger establishment in Southfields, south-west London.

Britain offers good, often excellent, north Indian food, especially tandoori recipes, and, in the last few years, dishes from south India, especially from Kerala, have also caught on in a big way. It is ironic that it is well nigh impossible to get Bengali food, given that the vast majority of the people who work in the Indian restaurants originate from Sylhet in Bangladesh.

London and indeed the UK is, alas, a luchi free zone. I know I am stepping into territory more dangerous than an Afghanistan minefield here but the way things are going in Calcutta, Bengali food will become increasingly hard to find there, too, save in restaurants. Although there are exceptions, the modern “can’t cook, won’t cook” Bengali housewife — indeed the modern Indian housewife — either wants to eat out or will order indifferent Chinese from restaurants. She will collect cookery books but seems reluctant, understandably, to slave in a Calcutta kitchen after a hard day at the office (that’s my goose cooked).

Therefore, we should be grateful to Simon and Udit for their tribute to what is in danger of becoming a lost cuisine. Theirs is a labour of love, with Simon providing the lyrical literary stirrings and Udit the recipes for everything from luchi to cholar dal, kosha mangsho, shorshe bata maach, mishti polao, khichuri, posto bata, chingri cutlet, mochar chop, payesh, bhapa doi and much else besides. And I must say the photographer, Jason Lowe, has caught Calcutta.

Simon, who has always come across to me as someone more at home in Calcutta than in London, modestly describes his evocative book as “merely a series of snapshots but ones taken with love”.

“I came to realise, many years ago, that for all its faults and difficulties, Calcutta — for me — is some sort of still point of the turning world,” admits Simon.

He recalls an insight offered by a Bengali friend: “What you’ve got to remember about us Bengalis is that we’re only really interested in three things: educating our children, reading books and food.”

My advice to Simon, as in all love affairs, would be to follow his heart, shift to Calcutta and open a bookshop-cum-restaurant. He could call it something like Simon’s Salon, with the slogan, “Read as much as you like but leave a little space for my mishti nothings.”

IRON LADY: Margaret Thatcher

Up and about

Margaret Thatcher, the “Iron Lady” who was Tory prime minister from 1979-90, will — unlike Sir Winston Churchill — not receive a state funeral, it was made clear last week by a spokesman on behalf of Tony Blair.

This extraordinary assertion also seemed somewhat in questionable taste since Lady Thatcher, 80, though in frail health, is very much alive.

The big fight

Britain is gearing up for the big fight — McCartney vs McCartney. Despite advice to Let it Be, the divorcing Paul and Heather have hired the law firms which were used by Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana.

Tittle tattle

England’s fast bowler Sajid Mahmood, 24, born in Bolton of Pakistani parents, had to put up with taunts of “traitor” flung at him by a section of the Pakistani crowd in Headingley last week.

“Saj” joked his father Shahid, once a fervent Pakistani fan, might have been responsible: “He probably instigated some of the abuse.”

In the past, Britain’s black bowlers have been similarly barracked by the small parts of the Caribbean contingent when England have played the West Indies.

I remember one occasion at the Oval when a Rastafarian expressed double disenchantment with England fast bowler Phil DeFreitas and with the umpire, John Holder, both black, during a Test against the West Indies.

The Rasta, who had smuggled a rattle into the ground, was causing so much nuisance that he was finally chucked out of the ground — by a black policeman.