London Diary: Historic Indian landmark to go?

Britain’s oldest Indian restaurant is facing an uncertain future and could be forced to close down as early as June if a dispute with its landlord over the renewal of its lease is not settled by then. Veeraswamy, located in the heart of London’s tourist hub, just round the corner from Piccadilly Circus, is on every well-heeled Indian visitor’s ‘must do’ list. It is equally popular with local celebrities, foreign dignitaries, politicians and even members of the royal family. Princess Anne, David Cameron and King Abdullah of Jordan are among those who have frequented the Michelin starred restaurant.

Barely two years ago, another historic culinary landmark, India Club, shut shop in similar circumstances. Veeraswamy has been based in Victory House owned by the Crown Estate — a collection of properties nominally belonging to the British monarch but managed by an independent public body — since 1926.

Ranjit Mathrani, co-owner of the company which owns Veeraswamy and a number of other high-end Indian restaurants, said they were told last summer that the lease would not be renewed. He said the news “came out of the blue” because only last year, the estate had asked him if he wanted to take more space in the building.

The Crown Estate says it needs to take back the restaurant as it is planning a ‘comprehensive refurbishment of Victory House’. This includes a major upgrade to the offices and improving the entrance to make it more accessible. Due to the limited options available in this listed building, ‘we will not be able to offer Veeraswamy an extension when their lease expires’, it said. However, Mathrani told The Times: “I think they’ve come to the view that it’s too tiresome having a restaurant there, they want it to be all offices.”

While he plans to approach the courts, he’s mentally prepared to move out. “We’ll have to close down and then seek to revive it at a new site... The effect of what they’re doing would be to effectively destroy a major London institution,” he said. Good luck, Mr Mathrani.

Honour for Indian university

For the first time, an Indian institution of higher education has won a prestigious honour at the Times Higher Education’s THE Awards Asia, known as the ‘Oscars of higher education’. These celebrate outstanding achievements across a wide range of university functions, covering academia, leadership and management, and the professional services. And the award goes to — Ahmedabad University, which has been named Leadership and Management Team of the Year.

The judges praised it for the “decisive, bold and imaginative action it has taken to transform itself into a research-intensive community of scholars and students”. They went on to say, “This achievement clearly showed how a united and determined leadership team could effect transformational change in the space of just a few years, for the benefit of the university and its local and national context.”

THE Awards Asia 2025 received well over 500 entries from individuals, teams and institutions from 21 countries or territories. Hong Kong and Japan achieved two wins each, and six other countries — India, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand — took home one each.

The rich-poor divide, with a twist

The conventional wisdom is that the poor are more generous than their affluent peers. Remember Charles Dickens’ ragged urchins who routinely displayed more charity than their well-heeled oppressors? But new research, said to be based on ‘decades of psychological evidence’, claims that those with deeper pockets tend to be more inclined to donate, volunteer or exhibit other forms of human kinship.

It sifted through data from more than 2.3 million people in 60 societies with participants drawn from a range of classes based on income, education levels and the perceived prestige of their occupations. “Irrespective of how we measured social class, we found a small-size positive association between higher social class and more pro-sociality,” said Professor Paul van Lange of Vrije University in Amsterdam, who oversaw the research. Anyone with contrary evidence?

Who’s a woman?

In case you missed this, the UK Supreme Court’s ruling that a ‘woman’ is defined by biological sex — not gender identity or sex change — has created a piquant situation for Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who had taken exactly the opposite position that “transwomen are women” — famously saying that a person can have male organs and yet identify as a woman.

His party MPs who opposed him were punished and at least one backbencher, Rosie Duffield, was suspended. Now he is under growing pressure to apologise to her but, like with most politicians, “sorry” doesn’t come to him easily.

And, finally, according to new research, a major factor for women in deciding whether or not they are going to be friends with another woman is the way she smells. ‘Women can tell if they’re going to be friends with another woman within just four minutes of meeting them, and they’re guided by smell as much as any other sense,’ reported the Daily Mail. The finding was based on an experiment in which a group of women were given T-shirts bearing the scent of other women.