To Rashida Chapti

Dear Mrs Chapti, I know that we are not formally acquainted, but I would like to extend my sympathy to you in your current predicament. Clearly, you are most unhappy about being separated from your husband and six children, and given that it is some fifteen years or so since you first came to England from India, and a full six years – according to Radio 4’s Today Programme – since you settled here, this sense of separation must be causing you some distress. Such distress in fact, that one of ‘our’ benevolent and public-spirited human rights lawyers has chosen to take up your case on your behalf. Believe me, I really do respect your right to a family life, and I fully encourage you to bring about a successful and permanent family reunion.

Mrs Chapti, if I am not mistaken, your love for my country must be great for you to have undertaken such an extraordinary course of action. Indeed, your husband too must be in possession of a pronounced love for my people and culture, as exhibited by your declaration that he as yet knows nothing of our language, and furthermore, has no intention of learning it should he take up residence here. You are a shining beacon Mrs Chapti, whose light shines out to countless millions! Indeed, these millions eagerly await the outcome of your case, for they too are keen to claim their ‘human rights’. How flattering it is in these times that the world should possess such a host of  ‘Anglophiles’!

By means of your wilful determination, you have managed over a decade and a half to master English so fully that you were unable to utter a single syllable of the language in your Today Programme interview, and thus had to have recourse to a professional interpreter. The efforts to which you must have gone to maintain such a profound state of  ignorance are nothing less than staggering. Moreover Mrs Chapti, believe me, I do understand that it can hardly be possible for your husband to afford English classes, for evidently such lessons must demand a titanic effort of saving, given that they must exceed the expense of you making regular transcontinental flights back to India. It is in full cognisance of your situation that I therefore proffer a suggestion which would yield an outcome that I am sure all of us would find thoroughly agreeable, and put an end to your state of psychological and emotional discomfort. Go home Mrs Chapti. Go home. Your husband and children are waiting for you. Whatever could stand in your way? 

Rashida Chapti - "a ravishing beauty" (Blind Pew)