SIX YARD WONDER: Sital Punja

Love means having to say sari

Three women, two of them English, have launched a competition to find the best in British saris.

But is there such a thing as a British sari?

By British, they mean designs which reflect Asian women’s experiences of living in Britain.

The project began when an artist, Helen Scalway, spent three months sketching what caught her fancy in a sari shop in Tooting, an Asian area in south London.

Her work was seen at a lecture by Susan Roberts, who runs Bridging Arts, an organisation which uses arts to bring different cultures closer together.

“I was immediately fascinated,” says Roberts.

She contacted Sital Punja, a businesswoman who owns Sari UK, a fashion label that collects old saris and turns them into western couture garments. “The three of us had the idea of taking the whole project a step further by staging a competition to generate new sari designs,” explains Roberts.

She adds: “We thought that it would be fascinating — and valuable — to see new British Asian sari patterns that tell the story of life in this country. Perhaps the new designs would feature plants, vehicles and vegetables from the UK. The colours would be different, reflecting greyer light, weather and rain.” The closing date for the competition, which also seeks regional variations, is June 30: “This year, 60 years after independence, we are looking for something new. The winning patterns will have emblems and motifs that reflect the experience of British Asians across the country, from Bradford to Leicester and Brent.”

The 10 best designs selected will be printed on 10 individual silk saris by the University of East London and eventually exhibited at the Museum of Brent in north London.

If Punja, born in Luton 35 years ago, could enter, she would seek inspiration in red telephone boxes and double decker buses as well as the city’s giant Vauxhall car plant. She would incline towards the colour green to reflect the region’s predominantly Pakistani population.

The idea of a British sari was anticipated by the artist Sharon Lutchman. A few years ago, she painted Shreela Flather, the first Asian woman in the House of Lords, wearing an imaginary sari in the patriotic red and blue of the Union flag.

LAST TITES: British troops pay their respect to those who died in the Falklands War

Sapper’s song

April 2, 2007, marks the 25th anniversary of the Falklands War. But among the many stories of heroism that will be told about the 255 British servicemen killed in action, almost no one will spare a thought for Sapper Pradeep Gandhi, the lone Indian who gave his life for Queen and country.

I had not even heard of him until I had returned from Argentina where I had been sent, a youth inexperienced in military matters, to cover the conflict.

Today, if you look at the roll call of servicemen who died in the Falklands, you find “Sapper Pradeep Gandhi” wedged between Warrant Officer Class Two Laurence Gallagher and Guardsman Mark Gibby.

Not much else is known about him.

Sapper Gandhi was hit, I believe, when Argentine aircraft strafed his position after the British had landed in the Falklands.

In keeping with British military tradition, he was buried with fellow British soldiers where they had fallen. Later I heard his remains were repatriated to Britain for a Hindu funeral. The family, especially Pradeep’s mother, were inconsolable and shut out the world.

There was no response either from her or Pradeep’s elder brother when I wrote to her, pointing out that her son, who was in his twenties, was the only serviceman of Asian origin to be killed in action. It would be a pity if he was forgotten, especially these days when the British want to do more to encourage immigrants to be loyal to Britain, following the Muslim suicide bombings in London. But the family of Sapper Gandhi, at least, could not have made a greater sacrifice.

INDIA SHINING: Will India make the Super G8?

India chronicle

At £3.50, it’s not cheap but I bought a copy of Investors Chronicle at Temple Tube station last week just before going into India House for a party where the Conservatives were launching an India business initiative. Wisely, India House offered the venue and samosas as it prepares for the possible era of David Cameron.

It was the cover story that made me buy the magazine: “The Rise of India. How to invest in the new economic superpower.”

The India section begins: “India is finally fulfilling its potential and showing signs of emerging as a true global superpower.”

I am now beginning to think that India should show some modesty and restraint in claiming superpower status. We don’t want to be knocked out in the early rounds of the super G8.

KUDOS GALORE: A scene from the play

Supple’s dream

Tim Supple’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is playing to very appreciative audiences at the Round House, a listed theatre, in Chalk Farm, north London. This is an unusual production which has actors from India speaking Hindi, Bengali (the old East Bengali dialect), bits of Sanskrit, lots of Tamil and, of course, English.

I noticed that audiences last week did not seem at all put off by the extended dialogue in foreign tongues.

For Supple, India has been an important part of his life recently. It was in India that over a period of three years, he work-shopped the Shakespeare comedy, recruited local actors (who are now all in Britain), rehearsed the adapted play and then took it on tour inside the country.

“It has been one of the most wonderful journeys of my life,” Supple tells me.

He found India very receptive to theatre, and, in fact, after the Round House and a major tour of British cities, A Midsummer Night’s Dream will return to India this year. It will then travel, with the same cast, to Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada and several European cities.

Supple himself is off to Muslim societies in the Middle East and Africa to see if he can repeat his multicultural theatrical model but with an Arabian tale.

What the director is trying to show, I think, is that if a theatrical performance is sufficiently visual, an audience can follow the plot even if people do not understand all the words.

Among the critics, Benedict Nightingale of The Times said it was the most original take on Shakespeare’s famous comedy “since Peter Brook tackled the play in 1970”, while Michael Billington of The Guardian was bowled over by the “visually ravishing recreation of the play”.

TWO BE OR NOT TWO BE: Jemima Khan

Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph concluded: “I left the theatre wanting to catch the next flight to Bombay to rekindle my own dormant love affair with the subcontinent.”

I left the theatre thinking Supple should do it all in Bollywood Hindi (I laughed at the “arre yaar, Bottom,” sort of line) and tour it in the remotest villages of India.

Tittle tattle

Prospects of a reconciliation between Imran Khan and his former wife, Jemima, who broke off with boyfriend Hugh Grant, are not looking promising. On the contrary, Jemima and Hugh have been papped furtively leaving each other’s homes at odd times of day and night as they practise “the art of separate togetherness”.