We were greatly honoured to host the Right Worshipful Mayor of Bath, Cllr Professor Bharat Pankhania, in January at one of our regular lunch meetings.
The Mayor, who is half-way through his one year term of office, has been a great supporter of Rotary across the city. He attended our Fireworks display in November and read a lesson at our packed-out community Carol Service in Bath Abbey, and this was a chance for us to say thank you for his enthusiastic support.
Invited to speak to us about “how I got here”, the Mayor took us back to his early life growing up in Kenya “not India, as some think”, before dramatically being taken out of school and escaping from growing ethnic tensions, to land up in Leicester. It was, he admitted, a difficult transition, even if made by his parents with the best intentions.
His schooldays in Leicester were not happy: the National Front were marching and his school was unprepared and disinterested in “these exotic brown boys who had arrived unexpectedly on their doorstep.” He soon realised he had to sort out his education himself and, in one of those life-changing moments which seem miraculous, he was walking along a street in Leicester past the University Library, and – “I don’t know why” – decided to go in and take a look.
“I had no right to be there. But no-one stopped me. So I went to the old card indexes, and looked up the O-level curriculum for the subjects I wanted, which my school wasn’t even entering me for. There were reading lists, so I went to my local library, created several memberships under slightly different versions of my name – you could do that then – and borrowed all the books I needed.”
He passed his exams with flying colours, and won at place at University to study medicine “because it was a seven year course, and I loved studying. It was a few years before I realised that graduating in medicine meant I would become a doctor!”
The Mayor’s theme for his year is “Education is Empowerment”. It’s not hard to see why.