Christmas 2018 was sad because my brother Rusi died Christmas Eve at Charing Cross Hospital. He was 92 and had been independent up to the last few months of his life. Rusi lived an eventful life. Born in Bombay to one of twelve siblings, he stands second from left in the photograph taken in Karachi during a visit by a young Prince Faisal. Faisal is standing at the far right of the picture. Immediately to Faisal’s left is my late brother Keki. To the far left of the picture is my late brother Gustad, who also died 2018. The older man standing centre stage is Mahmood, Faisal‘s private secretary. The small boy standing in front of Mahmood is his son, which Mama, through her prayers, helped his wife to conceive.
Rusi was so handsome that Mahmood’s 17 year old daughter fell in love with him. But marriage was not to be. Instead Rusi moved with the rest of our family to London in 1957, following Beheram’s drowning off Hawkesbay Beach three years earlier. It broke us up as a family. Rusi then worked as a BSM driving instructor but still retained business interests in Mumbai, which he had inherited from our late father, Jehangir, and which gave him a living. I miss them. They were like father-figures. Farida
BRUCE AND HOLLY 