Hyde Park Corner: Respecting the country

The success of our erstwhile rulers lay in colonising our minds, writes Pavan K Varma.

Sanjeev Ahuja speaks with an American accent and wears an orange tie. His accent is due to the many years he has lived in the USA, where he went as a student to do a degree in computer science at Columbia University. He wears an orange tie because he is the worldwide head of Orange, a company twice the size of Reliance. We met for lunch at Kai, arguably London's most classy restaurant for Chinese food, a stone's throw away from where I live on South Audley Street.

Over some delicious abalone soup and rice and bean curd and stir fried vegetables, Sanjeev spoke of the lifestyle he keeps, dividing the week between New York and London and Paris and a couple of more cities if business requires. I reckon he is in his late forties; he looks fit, and obviously in love with his work. In London, he tells me, he has another secret love: Hyde Park at 5:30 in the morning where he runs for a couple of miles.

Where Sanjeev Ahuja now runs was once a woodland where Henry VIII used to hunt. The Park was created from the wilds over the 17th and 18th centuries. It still has some magnificent trees-maple and horse chestnut and oak-but it has now become a vast lawn with manicured flower beds, and an attractive water body, the Serpentine, created in 1730. To its patrons it offers a wide range of locomotion: walking, jogging, running, cycling, skating, horse-riding and rolling on the grass, alone or in company. On any morning, joggers in shorts cross the path of office goers in pin stripe suits, for whom a walk through the Park is a pleasant alternative to the cab, tube or bus. On Sundays, of course, there are huge crowds at Speakers Corner, a spot for public oratory set up in 1832.

My wife and I walk in the Park every morning with our dog, Sultana. Sultana is quite an international traveller. Three years ago she had walked in unsteadily and uninvited into the drive of our New Delhi home, emaciated and flea ridden and but a few days old. My daughter took her to the vet, and she was adopted even though we had two dogs already. The other two dogs have since died, but Sultana went with us to Cyprus, and is now part of our family in London.

When people ask us what breed she is we say with pride: 'She is the great Indian hound'. Londoners see her and exclaim: 'Oh, what a beautiful dog!' The irony is that when the British ruled India they called our local breed mongrel or pariah. The British can be forgiven for their derisive dismissal but not so-called educated Indians who continue to ill treat our own dogs and consider it a status symbol to keep only 'foreign' pets, giving them ridiculous names like Tommy and Johnny! I have always maintained that the real success of our erstwhile rulers was not our physical subjugation but the colonisation of our minds.

If given love and care, the Indian 'mongrel' blossoms into a noble creature, good looking, loyal and intelligent. If we give our dogs the respect they deserve, others will do so too. Sultana merrily chases squirrels in Hyde Park. She walks without a leash, her tail up and her head held high. She loves the Park, and if only her humans would cooperate, would happily be there at the unearthly hour Sanjeev Ahuja likes. Incidentally, the British were factually incorrect in their choice of the word mongrel. Mongrel means a dog of mixed breed. But our local dogs are absolute thoroughbreds because there has been no dilution of blood for centuries!

(A Stephenian, Pavan Kumar Varma is a senior Indian diplomat and presently Minister of Culture and Director of the Nehru Centre in London. Author of several widely acclaimed books likeGhalib: the Man, the Times and the recently released Being Indian, he will be writing the column Hyde Park Corner, exclusively for HindustanTimes.com)