The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Gardens gift for Charles
● Prince receives miniature bonsai in India to mark his 71 years
The Prince of Wales has received a birthday present in miniature from a group of Indian schoolchildren – bonsai fairy gardens.
Charles spent his 71st birthday in Mumbai, meeting youngsters supported in their education by a charitable foundation working in collaboration with his British Asian Trust.
Back in the UK the prince’s sons and daughtersin-law paid tribute by releasing touching pictures of the heir to the throne on social media with goodwill messages.
The Indian children had been stumped over what to give the future king but came up with the present featuring the stories of Hindu deity Krishna, told with tiny figures in three bonsai gardens.
Their school has been supported by the Piramal Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the Piramal Group led by Indian billionaire industrialist Ajay Piramal.
His wife, Dr Swati Piramal, said: “What can you give a prince? What can the kids give him? So they thought of the bonsai gardens. He really loved it when I showed it to him, because of course in England there’s a culture of fairy gardens, there are gnomes, but this is unique because this is Krishna’s fairy garden.”
Charles’s two-day trip to India ended with a garland of flowers being placed around his neck and he clasped his hands in the traditional Hindu Namaste greeting when a boy gave him a flower.
The children sang Happy Birthday to the prince as he cut a large chocolate cake.
He offered one young girl a piece of chocolate sponge from the end of the knife and could not resist licking his fingers afterwards.
Before his birthday celebrations at an exclusive hotel on Mumbai’s waterfront, Charles joined a group of prominent Indian business leaders in a nearby room for a round-table discussion on sustainable markets.
In September, he set up the Sustainable Markets Council – with support from the World Economic Forum – to bring together major financial institutions, businesses and governments to make market mechanisms “work for, not against, sustainability”.
Charles is spending an undisclosed period privately in India before he starts a tour of the South Pacific, lasting more than a week, on Sunday. He will spend the majority of his time in New Zealand with wife Camilla before making solo trips to the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.