Face to face with the Raja

RARE FIND: Raja Ram Mohun Roy’s death mask

The tomb of Raja Ram Mohun Roy in Arnos Vale cemetery, Bristol, for which Singapore-based businessman Aditya K. Poddar has generously donated $100,000, will be repaired before another winter brings the 165-year-old structure tumbling down.

I am given this assurance by Rajat Bagchi, minister (coordination) at the Indian High Commission in London, who is making it almost his personal mission to ensure the repair is done expeditiously.

Bagchi, who declares the high commission is taking a keen interest in the matter, also draws my attention to the documentary, A Bristol Pilgrimage: In Search of Raja Ram Mohun Roy, made by New Yorker Aniruddho Sanyal.

Indeed, when I met Sanyal on a recent trip to Bristol, he told me of how he managed after a long search to track down Ram Mohun’s genuine death mask. This is a fascinating detective story that merits a whole documentary.

Sanyal said his interest in the Raja “began as a curiosity and became an obsession”, especially after he was shown his tomb by local historian Carla Contractor. “I was passing through a challenging phase in my own life. I was looking for a hero,” he explained.

“I worked on the documentary for two to three years and searched for the death mask,” revealed “Detective Inspector” Sanyal. “They had a practice at the time of taking an imprint of the face for famous people because there was no photography. They saved a likeness of the face and they had done this for Ram Mohun Roy and a replica of that had gone to Calcutta with Shivanath Sastri (a follower) but the original was lost.”

He went on: “Tracking it down was a long investigative search — I found the original. It was found in a very unlikely place — in the storage room of a museum in Scotland: Granton Art Centre in the Firth of Forth in Edinburgh. It is still there but it is not on public view. It took six months of wrangling with them to secure the permission to film.”

Sanyal commented: “It is quite different from the so-called replica that is in India which has been embellished because the actual death mask has asymmetric ears and has certain differences and in size a bit smaller than the one that is kept in the Ram Mohun Library in Calcutta.”

SRK vs Big B

Making music: Tina Vachani

For the big fight of the century, we have Shah Rukh Khan, the Badshah of Bollywood, in the right hand corner at the Nehru Centre. Meanwhile, in the Bafta corner, we have the equally menacing Big B, Amitabh Bachchan.

Shah Rukh, hair slicked down, arrived at the Nehru Centre 90 minutes late (“I’m a movie star and I’m Indian”), was given one award by ICICI Bank, for whom he is brand ambassador, and another by Eros International (“if Indian cinema is global today”, according to Kishore Lulla, Eros’s CEO, “it’s because of this one man”).

Shah Rukh came, saw and left hurriedly after his felicitation.

Over at Bafta, Bachchan returned the following day, this time to be interviewed on stage by Alan Yentob, the BBC’s “creative director”. During a Q&A, Bachchan defended his decision to play an older man in love with his daughter’s friend in Nishabd.

Some people had accused him unfairly of being “a dirty old man”, whereas it was just a challenging acting role. “If I had to play the patriarch of the family all the time, it would be very boring for me,” he pointed out.

On the evidence of last weekend, I thought Bachchan won Round 1 but there are other rounds to come. Bafta, incidentally, gave Bachchan honorary life membership. When he is better known, he may be a given a fellowship.

Back to roots

Shah Rukh appeared at the Nehru Centre, partly in support of an organisation called Roots2Roots, whose (invariably good looking) women members work to improve relations among Saarc countries, especially India and Pakistan, with cultural programmes.

This August, it is intending to mark the 60th anniversary of independence with a harmonious India-Pakistan concert on the Attari-Wagah border.

“A.R. Rahman has confirmed he is coming,” said Tina Vachani, general secretary of Roots2Roots and herself a former Karachi resident who married an Indian and now lives in Delhi.

Demilitarisation on the heavily mined Shah Rukh-Bachchan border is some way off, though.

Mittal mania

The name is Mittal.

No, not Lakshmi Mittal, but Sunil Mittal — and this week, he will be coming to a press conference near me.

On Tuesday, the Confederation of Indian Industry will sign an MoU with the Saïd Business School at Oxford to establish the university’s India Business Centre. This will be located in India and in Oxford.

The MoU will be signed in London by Sunil Bharti Mittal, president of the CII, and Professor John Hood, the Oxford Vice Chancellor. Professor Colin Mayer, the Dean of the Saïd Business School, will be present.

Led by Mittal, who is also chairman and group CEO, Bharti Enterprises, the CII is organising its annual visit to the UK of India’s leading chief executives.

I assume Sunil Mittal is sometimes mistaken for Lakshmi Mittal — and vice versa — but the former should take care never to say: “And, by the way, I own the mines in Kazakhstan.”

And the latter should avoid claiming: “I want to bring Tesco into India.”

Monty menace

The multiracial look in England cricket is reflected in the “England Lions” squad which will play the West Indies and which includes: Vikram Solanki (Worcestershire) captain; Kabir Ali (Worcestershire); and Owais Shah (Middlesex).

But the hero of the hour is Monty Panesar. For headline writers, what goes with Monty?

“Magic” is one word, “marvel” is another. Monty, now an established player in the England side, is on the field what Bishen Singh Bedi is in the world of commentators — very enthusiastic and very loud.

Now in danger of becoming a national institution, Monty was named England Man of the Series after spinning West Indies to defeat last week. In 17 Tests, he has taken at least five wickets on six occasions — five for 78 v Sri Lanka (Trent Bridge, June 2006); five for 72 v Pakistan (Old Trafford, July 2006); five for 92 v Australia (Perth, December 2006); six for 129 v West Indies (Lord’s, May 2007); six for 137 v West Indies (Old Trafford, June 2007); and Five for 46 v West Indies (Riverside, June 2007).

India had better watch out. Bedi appears to have coached his one-time pupil only too well.

Tittle tattle

Determined not to be put in the shade by De Montfort in Leicester and Leeds Met, which awarded honorary degrees to Amitabh Bachchan, a northern university, which I have been told not to name, is considering bestowing a similar honour on Shah Rukh Khan.