UNITED COLOURS: Richard Sorrell (left) and Vickram Sethi

Watering the colours of unity

Watercolours, I used to think, with their soft and delicate pastel hues, were an especially English art form. And so they are, except that I am now assured by Richard Sorrell, president of the Royal Watercolour Society in London, that Indians are pretty good at it, too.

The main difference is that Indians tend to favour brighter, bolder colours, he says.

At the Bankside Gallery, next to Tate Modern in London, are exhibited the results of a fascinating artistic collaboration between Britain and India.

Organised by Vickram Sethi, owner of the Institute of Contemporary Indian Art, a Mumbai gallery, a team of British watercolour artists, headed by Sorrell, flew out to Aurangabad earlier this year and met 10 Indian counterparts. Inspired by each other’s company, they seized brush and paint and produced several watercolours each.

I have always had a softness for watercolours. When I left a newspaper in London some years ago, my colleagues were kind enough to give me a watercolour as a goodbye gift. They were even kinder in not demanding return of same when I came back to the paper.

Last year in Rajasthan I had a little (very amateurish) go at painting watercolours under the watchful eye of James Horton, a distinguished English watercolour artist from Cambridge — watercolours are very difficult, he told me, because mistakes are not easy to correct.

Sorrell noticed that “some of the Indian artists worked on very large watercolours and painted with amazing speed and versatility. Many of them seemed to work happily from computer and digital camera images, especially the younger artists. I don’t think I saw one Indian artist sit in front of a landscape and paint it.”

In marked contrast, from among the British, Neil Pittway, “spent a day in the centre of the town by a pool with a great banyan tree, painting the scene with all the people milling around him”.

Perhaps the futuristic Kolkata Museum of Modern Art should have a section devoted to watercolours from around the world.

In between working, the Brits visited Ellora and Ajanta, recalls Sorrell, “where we saw one of the wonders of India, a painted cave dating from the 2nd to the 6th century, miraculously preserved, which seemed to hold in magical living form the vigour and vitality of life from remote antiquity. The effect was utterly overwhelming.”

BEYOND BARRIERS: Sunil Mittal (left) and Professor John Hood after signing the MoU

Matching Oxford

What can Cambridge do next to match Oxford now that the Said Business School at Oxford University is opening an India Business Centre with branches in both Oxford and Delhi — the memorandum of understanding was signed last week in London by Professor John Hood, vice-chancellor of Oxford, and Sunil Mittal, president of the Confederation of Indian Industry.

One possibility is for Amitabh Bachchan — and Cambridge — to honour the memory of his poet father, Harivansh Rai Bachchan, who was born exactly 100 years ago in 1907 — I remembered this last week while walking past St Catherine’s College, Cambridge, which is where Bachchan senior came in the 1950s to study English literature under Thomas Rice Henn, and do a PhD on W.B. Yeats and occultism (yes, really).

COME TOGETHER: Rami Ranger at the Carlton Club in London

Change at the Carlton

Indians are getting everywhere, including the Carlton Club, exclusive bolthole of upper crust Tories in London’s Mayfair. Last week, the Churchill Room, which has a painting of Winston at one end and a portrait of the young Queen, was the venue for a dinner hosted by the “British Asian Conservative Link”, an organisation that strives to strengthen relationships between the Tories and the ethnic minorities.

It was an elegant dinner at which fine wines were served along with salmon and a toast drunk to the Queen. As the Link’s founder, businessman Rami Ranger, who has been loyal to the Tory cause for years, got up to speak, I thought one time Mahatma Gandhi hater and baiter Winston Churchill looked down upon the assembled Indians with a kindly eye.

Brown’s team

Who will be part of Gordon Brown’s team?

One name that keeps cropping up is that of the elusive Shriti Vadera, a former director of Warburg Dillon Read (now UBS Investment Bank) who became “one of Brown’s most trusted advisers” at the Treasury. She may now move to 10, Downing Street — though Brown has said he wants the dominance of outside advisers over professional civil servants to end.

Now that Brown has also said he wants to tap the best talent in Britain, irrespective of whether those approached belong to the Labour Party or even are politicians, what about Lord (Swraj) Paul, the Labour peer who is known to be close to the new Prime Minister?

When I spoke to Swraj immediately after Brown succeeded Tony Blair, the founder of the Caparo steel group insisted he did not want a formal job.

“I don’t want to take any assignment,” he said.

But he would be happy to work to promote Indo-British relations, “as I have been doing for the last 30 years”.

If Brown wants experienced entrepreneurs to serve on his “business leaders’ council” — he has already recruited Sir Alan Sugar, who presents a reality TV show called The Apprentice — he could do worse than ring former Mumbai boy made good in the world of Indian cuisine, Sir Gulam Noon.

Tittle tattle

As we all know, Garuda, the eagle, ally of the Gods, doesn’t like snakes — especially in the boardroom. So Barclays Bank, which has lots of Hindu customers and is in the process of expanding its operations in India, had better watch out.

Barclays wants to drop the eagle, which has been its logo for 279 years, in a number of countries, including notably the Netherlands, because of the bird’s association with the Nazis.

It is quite clear that Hitler, who also appropriated the Swastika, had a thing about Hindu symbols. Had he been alive today, he would probably have addressed rallies looking cool in an “Om” tee shirt.

Barclays, which has made a £45 billion bid for the Dutch bank, ABN Amro, has promised the change of logo if the takeover succeeds. But if Barclays manages to please the Dutch, it could offend some Hindus — and these days the power of Indian/Hindu money cannot be ignored. When in an irritable mood, Garuda can do terrible things.