Sunday Times 2
All hail King Bazza!
View(s):British father-of-four becomes head of Indian tribe after spending £20,000 relocating village from rubbish tip
By Leon Watson
A father-of-four from Chepstow in south Wales has become a real-life man who would be king after he was crowned ‘King Bazza’ to head a tribe in India. English-born Barry Watson, 60, has been given the lofty title by the Yanadi tribe, from Andhra Pradesh, India, who have named a new village after him – Barrypuram. The charity worker and father-of-four, who runs social media company Let Us Be Social, helped rescue the villagers from life on a rubbish tip.
He paid £20,000 for land for farmers to construct 31 huts with lighting, install water pumps, a chicken farm, a school and church. The fascinating project began by chance, when ex-insurance broker Mr Watson met Julie Davies, who runs her own Indian village support charity in memory of her 16-year-old daughter, at a meeting. In the 1975 film The Man Who Would be King starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine – Connery’s character Danny is crowned leader of a fictional tribe on the Indian sub-continent in a case of mistaken identity.
Things soon turn sour however when Danny is found out and killed but unlike the film Barry’s ‘royal’ reign is having a happier ending. He said: ‘I love my name King Bazza, I am their guard. I wanted to give them a better life without the trappings of Western civilization, keeping their own cultures. ‘On the tip they had nothing, their life expectancy was only about 40.’
Mr Watson was inspired by the Elizabeth-Ann charity, so he travelled with the Davies family overseas to see how he could help. As the entrepreneur felt as they were doing an amazing job in Burlavaripalem, he discovered another sector of the community, the Yanadi tribe, could benefit from similar work. Mr Watson founded his charity Help the Village in 2009, a branch of Elizabeth-Ann, and raised funds partly from a trip in Mini cars to France the year after.
Since then, the father to twins Kate and Zola, 29, Zak, 23 and Luke, 19, has achieved notable milestones in building the village. Two months ago, he and 15 others flew to Chennai and rode on rickshaws to Barrypuram, raising £10,000 for locals. The Chepstow businessman is now tasked with making the village sustainable, training 16 women to sew for a business and making the buildings more permanent out of stone.
He said: ‘India is like Marmite, you love it or hate it. I love the chaos, it’s totally different to anything else I have done. Once it’s in your blood you have to go back.’
Mr Watson said his Indian odyssey actually began in the 1970s when he used take ‘hippie’ friends to Kathmandu, Nepal, aged 21 as a ‘public school idiot’ in his own words.
Mr Watson said: ‘I first went to India as a public school idiot who didn’t have a job and saw an advert for overland drivers wanted to go to India, so I applied and they said “you’re going in a week”.
‘Three years later I came home and vowed I would never return to India until I had a real purpose to go back for. ‘Forty years later that purpose happened, when I met a fantastic woman called Julie Davies and she wanted me to go to India with her. When I saw what she had done with one village I told her I wanted to do the same.’
Mr Watson said when he first met the Yanadi tribe he was told he was expected.
He said: ‘They said there was an ancient prophecy one day a white man would come and build them a village. ‘It really was I was like Sean Connery and the man who would be king, when I said I was going to build them a village, about half believed me and half didn’t.’ ‘The main man behind all this has been Vinay Kumar who has been able to make everything happen, I couldn’t have done it without him.’
Mr Watson, who lives with wife Shirley, 47, said in November and December they were returning to the village again to continue the good work. He said: ‘We have no aspirations to be a national charity, we just want to help this village, my wife was not too sure at first and said she wouldn’t go back after the first visit.
‘But now she’s coming in December, once you’ve been to India it’s in your blood.’
© Daily Mail, London
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