Mystery on the barge

Forgive me for writing to you, but your recent exploits put me in the sort of state that a female teenager from Mumbai contemplating some new feat of Sachin Tendulkar’s would succumb to. (I speak metaphorically. I don’t in any sense want to bear you children.)

While watching Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee flotilla on TV, we saw your blue turban bobbing up in the crowded royal boat behind Her Majesty and the Duke of Edinburgh. It gave me a thrill of recognition — of being recognised, that is. There you were, the visible symbol of ethnic Asian inclusion in this great spectacle.
I and my fellow watchers, sipping our ciders and chewing Gujarati gathias before the TV screen, were keen to identify all the personages on the Barge.
“There’s Prince Charles — all the better to hear you!”
“Hah! The Duchess of Cambridge — a rear view”...and so on.
Then excitedly: “Oh look, there’s a Sardarji. Wow! We made it! Is it our own Manmohan?”
“Can’t be. She would have had to invite all the Commonwealth Prime Ministers and that could have sunk the ship.”
“Is it Monty Panesar — bowl them over, lad!”
“No it isn’t, it’s an older geezer. Must be Lord Singh.”
“Who is Lord Singh?”
A brief discussion established that there was no such personage, so the mystery persisted. There may have been other swarthy parties on the boat, but neither Lord Abdul or the Wali of Swat were wearing saris so couldn’t be readily spotted.
It was your sole presence that represented the recognition of our multicultural society even though we later read that your daughter accompanied you.
And now Ranaji, a fuss has broken out over this very presence on the boat. It is alleged that you are a sex offender! In British law and under the rules of libel and contempt, once you’ve been convicted and even served a four-year sentence for your crimes I don’t have to be circumspect and say “alleged sex offender” — I am free to say you are the real thing!
Obviously the row, created by members of Parliament asking questions and voicing protest, was aimed at the supposed security lapse that allowed a convicted sex offender to be invited onto the Royal Barge and cruise from Vauxhall to Tower Bridge in the company of the royal family.
How did that happen? It is reported that you were the guest of Prince Charles whom you claim is a “good friend”. His officials neglected to check on your illustrious or chequered history and relied on the designation you have given yourself as the High Panjandrum of the Anglo-Sikh Heritage Trail. Prince Charles has been, demonstrably over the years, anxious to ingratiate himself with the ethnic community and makes it his business to be au fait with all manner of heritage questions and trails.
When I met him on one occasion, he wondered about my name.
“That would be Muslim?” he asked.
“No, sir, I was born a Zoroastrian, a Parsi,” I replied.
“Ah! Tell me, why are there so few of you?” he asked.
“Umm… something to do with our sexual habits...” I said and was going to elaborate on the theory when his equerries behind him desperately whisked him away to be introduced to the next person.
How can one forget such royal encounters? If those equerries had not been so alert I might have even impressed him with my theories about the Zoroastrian Heritage trail-off and, who knows, I might have been Lord Dhondy of Sachapir with an invitation to ride with you on the Royal Barge.
But enough about me. One must recall your daring enterprise. It seems that when you were younger and working for the social services you accessed information about several women on your registers, dressed up as a doctor, complete with a doctor’s leather case with injections and medicines, and called on these women saying you had been sent to give them a thorough examination.
Very many of them fell for it and obliged you by inviting you in and allowing you access to their bodies for the “examination”. It also emerged that you injected one woman in the buttocks. At Dudley Crown Court you were convicted of 11 assaults on women, five indecent assaults and one attempted assault. You served four years in jail.
An MP for Birmingham was most indignant.
“Who thought that Rana was an appropriate guest for an event involving so many women?” was what he asked reporters.
I find the implications of the question absurd. What has the number of women in the event got to do with it? Does he think that you would go up to Kate’s sister and, posing as a doctor, ask to inject her in the rear? And do these MPs who are outraged really think that your presence posed some sort of danger to the Queen? If you’d been released from an institution for the criminally insane this would perhaps be a legitimate fear, but the trail of your criminal past demonstrates that you are in perfect intellectual charge of the
tactics, strategy and theatrical skills required to get women to take their clothes off and subject themselves to physical examinations and treatment.
Ranaji, there have also been protests against your appointment to the Inner Cities Religious Council which advises the government on religious issues in the community. The protest was lodged by the Sikh Secretariat, a campaigning group. They argued that you were, as a sex offender, not the best representative of the Sikh religion. I have to admit they have a point.
But as for the boat ride, what harm was done? I bet none of the Sikh Secretariat gang were invited!