The day I met the Queen of England I had butterflies in my stomach, but when she started talking to me I dropped my guard and spoke to her freely.
It was 1997 and Queen Elizabeth II had come to India to mark the 50th anniversary of Indian Independence. This was her third visit to India. Among all the other functions she had to attend, one was a meeting with the heads of British companies in India.
Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), then known as Hindustan Lever Limited, which was the largest FMCG company in India, was also invited. The invite came from the British High Commissioner asking us to a meeting with the Queen followed by tea. This was just before I went abroad, I was on the board of the company looking after many departments, including corporate affairs. Our chairman, S.M. Datta, requested me to represent the company, maybe because handling corporate affairs as I did, such functions were a part of my job.
I flew from Mumbai, where we were headquartered, to Delhi for the meeting.
We were asked to arrive in the afternoon. We were briefed by the team at the High Commission essentially about the etiquette of meeting the Queen and what would be expected of us, like addressing her as ‘Madam’ instead of ‘Your Highness’, what kind of questions she could ask, etc.
We lined up in two rows, waiting for her, and we expected that she would be meeting everyone individually. When Queen Elizabeth arrived, she greeted everyone as she passed through the two rows and stopped in front of some people to have a conversation. She was accompanied by the British High Commissioner and the CII director general, who was introducing everyone. There were quite a few British top brass lined up before me but the Queen stopped in front of me. I was introduced to her and she thanked me for coming and said that she was very pleased to meet me. We then had a conversation for at least five minutes, if not more, where she asked me more about Hindustan Lever and its contribution to the global Unilever business. She was very surprised to hear that the company had manufacturing units in India as well and enquired about where these centres were located. I informed her about the 120-125 factories we had around the country from big cities to remote areas. When I mentioned Assam as one of the places where we had factories, she asked me if we were also into tea. Maybe her interest came from her knowledge of Unilever as a company and because she didn’t have many details about Hindustan Lever.
After that she addressed the gathering and then sat at a separate table for tea.
Ever since I had awareness, since the early 1950s, I had heard about the Queen of England, about Queen Elizabeth. She was an integral part of my knowledge of England. So, of course, I was a bit nervous about representing a company as big as Hindustan Lever before her. But when she started talking she was so polite, so soft-spoken and had such grace that I dropped my guard and forgot to be nervous.
What I remember from that meeting was her commanding presence. She didn’t speak loudly or sternly, she had no airs, but her presence was felt. And I was thinking about that when I sent a picture of me meeting the Queen, sent by the British High Commission, to an HUL group I am part of on WhatsApp, after the news of her death yesterday. I still treasure that faded photo, not because it was with a monarch but because I got to brief the Queen about the company’s presence in India. I was lucky that she stopped and spoke to me, giving me a chance to share our successes with her.
(As told to Chandreyee Chatterjee)
Aniruddha Lahiri was a member of the Hindustan Unilever board for many years as well as the managing director of the ABP Group and then the president of The Chatterjee Group (TCG).
