TWO TO TANGO: Kishwar and Meghnad Desai

How Sanjay Dutt was spoiled by Nargis

Should Sanjay Dutt be given an early release considering he has already served 19 months out of his six-year sentence for illegal possession of firearms and that he is clearly viewed with considerable affection by much of India as are his late parents?

The very idea would be “outrageous”, declared Lord Meghnad Desai.

He was at the Nehru Centre last week with his wife, Kishwar, to help her launch, Darlingji, The True Love Story of Nargis & Sunil Dutt (HarperCollins; £10 in UK, Rs 395 in India).

In the course of doing the book, the couple admitted they had become exceedingly fond of Sanjay and his sisters, Priya and Namrata, and had even helped the girls compile Mr and Mrs Dutt, their own illustrated tribute to their parents. The Dutt family had taken Meghnad and Kishwar into their confidence and entrusted them with 12 volumes of intimate letters between their parents.

But that did not mean the law should be bent to secure the release of Sanjay, though they were happy he had been given bail.

Asked why he thought Sanjay had given so much trouble, Meghnad put it succinctly: “When you read this book, you realise how utterly spoilt Sanjay was. Nargis was completely, utterly crazy about this boy — he was her first born. He is spoilt by the mother, not the father.”

Lovebirds Meghnad and Kishwar had intended initially to put down their names as co-authors. But after having read her draft, Meghnad decided there was not much he could do to improve Darlingji, which he really does believe “will change the way Bollywood biographies are written in future” on the basis of thoroughly researched archival material which he hopes all Indians will learn to preserve.

Invited (by me) to offer a personal opinion on whether a line should now be drawn under Sanjay’s case, Meghnad responded heatedly: “It would be outrageous and it would be thought by the Indian public to be outrageous if he got treated differently from the various other people who are standing trial with him — and all other people standing trial with him have been punished. Some have been sent to capital punishment. This is a very serious matter. Just because we all love Sanjay Dutt does not mean the law should treat him differently. Even if it was a very popular thing and might get many vote banks, this has to be left to the courts and the courts have to judge because it really would be terrible if we started saying, ‘Actors can do things and get away with it.’ Salman is to come — two different cases. Law is law. It has to take its course. Justice should be blind.”

Kishwar concurred: “I agree absolutely. Whatever the courts decide is probably the best way to go.”

Sorry, Sanjay, I tried.

Croatia conundrum

For England to be knocked out of the European Football Championships by Croatia has come as a shock to a lot of people — except possibly to Dev Anand who was perspicacious in spotting that perhaps Croatia is the coming country and that it is blessed with more than its share of seductive women.

His entertaining autobiography, Romancing with Life, ends with the disclosure that his new movie, When Heartbeats Are the Same, is to be shot on location “at Motovun, one of the beautiful towns of Croatia”.

As always, he found the perfect guide: a young Croatian lady with “soft honeyed voice”.

No doubt Croatians will put me right on their glorious history but, in my ignorance, I had assumed Croatia was not even a proper country until the territory declared its independence from the old Yugoslavia in 1991.

Sporting prowess, in most people’s imagination, is linked with a nation’s international standing and prestige. This makes it hard to understand how Britannia, which once ruled the footballing waves, should be humbled by Croatia.

Most Indians in England still probably support India when it comes to England-India cricket matches. But in football, more and more British Indians are becoming fanatical supporters of England. We shall have achieved full integration when one of the tabloids uncovers the nation’s first British Indian soccer hooligan with a Union flag painted on his beer belly.

TEDDY TALK: Aloysius (centre) with Anthony Andrews (left) and Jeremy Irons in the TV drama, Brideshead Revisited

Ted in trouble

A British teacher, Gillian Gibbons, 54, was given 15 days in prison in Sudan last week for “insulting” Islam. Her sin was to allow seven-year-old pupils at the Unity School in Khartoum to name their class teddy bear Mohammed.

If only the Sudanese were familiar with Evelyn Waugh’s 1945 novel, Brideshead Revisited, with its wonderful evocation of Oxford life, they would have realised that the British are not like other people: they have a special relationship with their teddy bears. During his Oxford days, Lord Sebastian Flyte was seldom seen without his teddy bear, Aloysius, firmly clasped to his chest. In fact, in the 1981 television adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, Aloysius became as much of a star as the leading actors, Anthony Andrews and Jeremy Irons, who played Sebastian Flyte and Charles Ryder respectively.

Other famous British teddy bears include A.A. Milne’s creation, Winnie the Pooh; Paddington Bear; and Rupert Bear.

“Aloysius is remembered by everyone,” says author John Mortimer, who adapted Brideshead Revisited for television 36 years ago. “He’s an integral character to the book. Waugh wouldn’t have put Aloysius in there unless he thought he was an appropriate symbol of Sebastian not growing up.”

The Sudanese ambassador in London, who has been summoned to the foreign office by David Miliband to hear a British protest over the treatment of Mrs Gibbons, should not be disconcerted if he were to find a teddy bear occupying pride of place on the foreign secretary’s table — or even lodged in his lap.

NEW ROLE: Kamalesh Sharma

Anyone for Gandhi?

Now that Kamalesh Sharma is moving on to his new job as Commonwealth secretary- general, careful thought needs to be given to his successor as Indian High Commissioner in London.

Many of us would be happy if the job went to Gopal Gandhi, who knows London well since he was director here of the Nehru Centre. Subsequently, he was even appointed envoy to London but Ronen Sen was sent instead at the last minute. Mind you, after dealing with the CPM heavies in Calcutta, the West Bengal Governor might find London more than a little dull.

PASSAGE TO INDIA: Dr Alison Richard

Tittle tattle

The place to be on Wednesday is the grand dining hall of Trinity College where Dr Alison Richard, the vice-chancellor, is hosting a banquet for Cambridge-connected Indians ahead of her landmark trip to India early next year. Those attending will include Amartya Sen. It was under his watch as Master of Trinity (1998-2004) that English civilisation as we know it ended when mango chutney and popadum were introduced at High Table.

Today, this might provoke the historian, Thomas B. Macaulay, a Trinity old boy, to observe that “a single jar of a good lime pickle is worth the whole native cuisine of the British Isles”.