Vicki Treadell, the first woman British Deputy High Commissioner in Mumbai and India, absolutely loves her job and can’t wait to share the details. We are seated in her books-strewn office at Nariman Point, where a miniature Mumbai taxi and an autorickshaw occupy pride of place on a side-table, as do tomes on the city written by motley writers. She talks about visas, Consular Service, trade and investment strategy and diplomatic ties with the sort of exuberant relish one would not normally associate with such serious subjects. But then, she has the admirable ability to be enthused by her environment, rather than overwhelmed by it. Which has stood her in good stead on various postings to countries like Malaysia and Pakistan, in addition to her native UK, where she has served in various capacities, over 25 years, with the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO).

Strangely, her earliest memories in life are of her as a two-and-a-half-year-old visiting Mumbai. “We had taken a P&O cruise liner to Mumbai and those are my first memories. I recall going in a horse carriage all the way up to the Hanging Gardens and being photographed beside the shoe-house with my sister.” Even more strangely, when she beat a bunch of very bright colleagues to get the coveted post of the British Deputy High Commissioner in Mumbai, it was this “shoe-house memory” that came flooding back to her!

Born in Malaysia and raised there till the age of eight, when the family shifted to Sussex in the UK, Treadell believes she embodies the best of British multicultural bonhomie as she hails from a half Dutch-half French father and a Singaporean Chinese mother. “Britain has given me every opportunity and I am proud to be promoting the best of Britain,” she beams. We chat a bit about the Shilpa Shetty phenomenon and she asserts that it only underlines what a sense of multicultural ethnicity England has, especially as Jane (not-so) Goody was voted out! “Shilpa reinvented her career overnight in England and dispelled any myth that the nation is racist,” she stresses.

Her job has thrown up many challenges, not the least being to reveal, refresh and renew public perception that the UK has a lot to offer to the Indian corporate world. “India is the second largest investor in the UK,” she comments, “and we have such a long history together, going back to the colonial past, then to post-Independence readjustment and now to a 21st century partnership of equals. It’s my job to make people feel that there’s still something fresh about the UK.”

She did this innovatively at the Bond-themed party she threw to commemorate the Queen’s birthday recently. Here is one lady she admires! “I had the opportunity of looking after Her Majesty during a 10-day-long state visit to Malaysia when I was posted there,” Vicki recalls fondly, “and she is the ultimate role model for all working women. She’s enormously professional and extremely inspirational. No matter what goes on in her personal life, she keeps such a graceful and dignified public face. And she has been a constant in British life since 1951 – having outstayed every Bond, that other icon of British life!”
Treadell has been 14 months in India already and the term could go up to three or four years. She doesn’t rule out doing something out of the diplomatic circuit at some point. But her next goal is, understandably, the top job as British High Commissioner in some country.