Many years ago a number of us worked on a new drama production called, “The Story of Asha, Ayesha and Usha”. It grew out my conviction around 1999 that the new Millennium was not going to offer any utopias, not even a world of perfection where no one harmed anybody and women had their fundamental rights protected. Well there are 91.5 years left to prove me wrong. I have placed a £50 note under Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, London, for any reader who cares to remember in 2099 and to check it out. Boris Johnson, may need to be reminded that very important pledges have been made to upgrade the quality of life of Asian elderly and that the £50 note is intended for charitable use only. No Member of Parliament is allowed to use the money to cover expenses.
Our sister Asha grew up with four brothers and had the qualifications of a UN Secretary General but only missed her appointment because Idi Amin had reserved that job for himself, a security adviser – to inform us when dad was in a bad mood just as we stepped in at midnight after a hockey game had ended in the late afternoon, a fire fighter- who kept all tensions away by making sure that the neighbour, a nosey massi, an elderly Gujarati lady who was everything but an aunt by making sure that she did not have contact with our parents, a scout- she would keep a lookout for unwanted guests who would always walk in just as we were leaving to go and see an ‘educational’ but ‘ X ‘ rated film at the Norman cinema. You see, our dad had this view that every western picture was a serious threat to our tender Sikh morals and while films relating to war, famine, bank robberies, arson, car thefts, booby-trap bombing and Hiroshima were not going to hurt us in any way, it was scenes of the stuff that goes on between the shameless white women and their men when they did not even switch off the lights….That were the real threat to our outlook on life and would leave us without qualifications.
Asha was also an ambassador- who went with our parents to see three extended families which had so many sons and daughters that someone was always getting married or someone was always having a baby. Why was that so important? Our parents wanted the relations to know that their children cared for the extended family; an emotional blackmailer- who drove us nuts if we did not slip a 10 shilling note into her chemistry textbook, a smuggler- who made sure that all the nice samosas packed in newspapers were reserved for us in a rusty bucket hidden under the table when we went to the Gurdwara and a hockey player- who executed tasks to a precise finish each time, leaving the players of the opposite side holding their painful ankles, rubbing their groins, pressing their exploding ribs and massaging their swollen fingers after she had complied to our instructions and at each command, raised her stick in the air but always below the regulation height. The “instructions”, which could be issued at anytime in a hockey match had one common factor – she was only brought in to inflict pain and injury on the good players of the other side by deftly swinging a hockey stick or hitting a ball so hard at close range that the players would hold up their sticks in the air in utter disbelief while the balls found their targets. Many an important hockey tournament was won when Asha was playing in our team and it did not surprise us as much as the local newspapers when we finished the hockey season at the bottom of the fourth division; Asha got married that year. We did not let any of the major companies know that their share price would almost quadruple if Asha even as much as sat in their reception. She was a source of immense good luck but offering her a job was of no use – she used to get bored so easily that once she even demanded we have a hockey practice in board room of IBM where dad’s company had been called in to fix a film screen much to my dad’s displeasure. Was IBM going to screen those nasty films in their Board Room as well? The world was changing so fast…IBM managers were shown sleazy movies as a part of their training in salesmanship.
But it was none of the above qualities that really mattered. In fact the tasks she achieved above were so ordinary that I have use a thousand words instead publishing a single picture. The real achievements had started when Asha was just under nine years old. A departing English colonialist had left a car behind when it was still being repaired by a local garage. The garage owners knew that they were not going to be paid and so they decided to move it out of the workshop to create space for the cars of other English colonialist civil servants who always paid their bills in time, mostly by bringing in bottles of scotch whiskey that had been brought into the country in a large white crate with the words ‘medical supplies’ tastefully painted on the side of the crate. A Red Cross which had its arms longer than its only leg had also been added in a hurry; the red drops of paint had dripped downwards, leading to concerns that Dracula had come to Kampala.
So Asha and some of us decided to check out the abandoned car. It was fast becoming a wreck- its windscreen wipers were used by the farmer to clean his kitchen windows, one of the seats was used by the neighbour’s house worker when he had the rare occasion to take a long rest on Wednesday afternoons – an auspicious time for all Indian women who went to the temple for ‘ladies only’ prayers much to the annoyance of the local cinema manager who had also programmed to screen ‘Ghar Ghar ki Kahani’ at the same time. You see, the elderly mothers-in-laws who went to see this film also found it so gratifying that they were not the only ones who had their sons’ wives beaten regularly. It was the story of every household with daughter-in-laws. Anyway, we decided to check out the car and I was given the first “ride”, except that the wheels had been stolen and the car was carefully placed on building blocks, with the overhanging ends of each axle carefully placed on a block of timber over and above the cement blocks. My “drive” was short but interesting. Then two other brothers took a long time having their fun at driving the car at great speeds. One of them felt that by placing the car on high blocks, the garage owner had deprived us budding rally drivers of a feeling of movement. Far too many screeching brakes had been applied to no effect – the car did not even move a little to its side when cornering. So Asha was asked to push the car, which she did so quickly that the car fell off the blocks. Brothers nearly fell out of the vehicle, with one lying in the legroom of the back seat, with a cardboard flap advertising tampons almost covering his face. We slowly collected our wits and found that thankfully no one was hurt. A missing turban was found under the driver’s seat. There was some smell of oil but that was only to be expected on a race track, you know.
It was then that we suddenly remembered that Asha was nowhere to be seen. The nasty thought hit me that she might be actually lying underneath the car with her eyes shut. Doors were swung open in great haste and on coming out we looked towards the front and back and again to the front looking for Asha. But there was Asha with tears in her eyes. I ignored one brother who was asking me why we were looking for Asha at the front when she was supposed to be pushing the car at the back. On closer examination we discovered that when the car was heaving backwards and forwards, she had forgotten to move her foot out of the way. My brother asked with great feeling, intense care and love “Why did you push the car so hard Asha? You should know that it was placed on these blocks”. Asha replied in a strange voice that she wanted to give us a real feeling of speed. Why was she not wearing her stiff school shoes? How could you push the car from the side? When pushing a car to start, you always pushed it from the b-a-a-ck and the axle would not have dropped on her foot. It was her fault. Soon the technicalities were sorted out but it suddenly dawned on us that it was getting dark and that our parents would be waiting for us at home with very hot vindaloo and supposedly, a tasty chicken curry. That was the real challenge of the evening; not the curry but how we could get Asha through the back door of the house without dad finding out that she had been injured.
More on this very soon.
