London Diary

Colours of India: 

The Indian summer continues in London. This week will see the first Indo-British fair showcasing an eclectic fusion of Indo representing everything Asian, Indian, Boho, tribal, gypsy and British designer products under one roof. The fair opens in the heart of Regent Street, where 55 talented designers are displaying the best of East and West in fashion, crafts and culture. It's an innovative mix of textiles, fashion, jewellery, art, handicrafts and more. Over three days, visitors can enjoy henna sessions, dress up at the Britannica Vintage Fashion Studio or try their hand at gypsy jewellery making, block printing or Bindi art! Different groups are staging Indian classical dance performances. And of course no Indian celebration is sans Indian street food and Bollywood music. 

Among the 55 designers are names like Vintage Amelia, a Milton Keynes based enterprise that produces designer pieces using vivid hand-drawn prints and luxury handcrafted silk batik. Manufactured in Sri Lanka, the company gives vital employment to widows of the ethnic war in the North East of the island. There will also be AAN by Arti, a brand that is now attracting buyers from the UK and USA, using cotton ginning and weaving mills across India in the 1800s to the hand-embroidered high fashion designs it creates in Delhi today. Neetu Jalali's Zafran will exhibit the famous Kashmiri pashminas and homespun silks from indigenous mills. 

The Jeremy Corbyn Affair: 

Ever since the surprise election of left-winger Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party chief, it portends interesting times ahead. The party is going through some serious churning with Labour moderates unhappy with the latest change. There are even murmurs of looking at forming a new party. In the current situation, with the Lib Dems also being wiped out in the last elections, there is concern that the Tories will have no opposition left. With the London Mayor elections scheduled for next year, it has impacted the larger political battle, with Labour's candidate Sadiq Khan accusing Corbyn and John McDonnell, the new Shadow Chancellor, of risking inciting terrorist and anti-Semitic attacks in the capital. Khan, of Pakistani-origin suggested that Corbyn's refusal to sing the National Anthem at the Battle of Britain memorial service in St Paul's Cathedral showed he was unfit to be Prime Minister. He has also denounced the Labour leadership duo's links to terror groups. He said McDonnell's claim that IRA killers should be 'honoured' could encourage terrorism in London, and Corbyn's support for Arab extremist groups could inspire anti-Semitic attacks. The Tories are silently enjoying the open dissent in Labour while the jury is still out on Zac Goldsmith's chances as the next London mayor. The MP is son of the late billionaire James Goldsmith and the interest in his candidature could also be because it could inspire the return of his sister, Jemima, former wife of Imran Khan, in the public eye. 

An Indian prodigy: 

Albert Einstein and Stephen are known to have scored 160 in the Mensa IQ test. Now, a 12 year-old girl of Indian-origin has beaten the two famed physicists. Lydia Sebastian, originally from Kerala has achieved the perfect score of 162 on Mensa's Catrall III B test. The youngster nagged her parents for a whole year before they reluctantly granted her permission to take the test during her school holidays. Understandably, Lydia of Langham, Essex was nervous at the start of the test, where she was surrounded by grown-ups hoping to qualify for Mensa membership, but she finished the test at London's Birbeck College, with minutes to spare. The test required her to complete analogies, define lesser-known words and solve logic puzzles.

Her proud father Arun, a radiologist at Colchester General Hospital, and doctor mother were overwhelmed with the result. Their only child, Lydia is a girl of many talents. A bookworm, she has been playing the violin since she was four. Lydia's feat of cognitive firepower puts her in the top 1% of test-takers and in a position to be accepted by Mensa, which famously accepts only people who score in the top 2% of IQ tests. In an historical perspective, in 1926, two psychologists estimated the IQs of 300 geniuses, giving both Albert Einstein and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart a score of 160, even if the two men had never taken a standard, formal test.

A Magical Trip: 

In a unique and humane gesture, a 100- black-cab convoy transported children with life-threatening illnesses on a three-day trip to Disneyland Paris. Manhattan Grill, the West India Quay restaurant made sure the kids would not go hungry and packed 500 lunches for the little travellers who made their way in a three-mile convoy from Canary Wharf. The procession — organised by the Magical Taxi Tour and Worshipful Company of Hackney Carriage Drivers — also included City of London police escorts, Gendarmerie Nationale, London Ambulance NHS Trust vehicles and AA breakdown trucks. The charity trip offered more than 250 children a break from treatment and therapy. After meeting the Lord Mayor of London, the travellers were bundled into the cabs and made their way to Dover, where they caught a ferry to Calais. The Magical Taxi charity involved children selected by London hospitals and all the cabbies donated their time and fuel free of charge. After experiencing the fantasy world of their favourite Disney characters, the children even got to meet them at a Gala Dinner. For kids with threatening illness it was a fantasy come true.