My groan at the strident sound of the early morning alarm changed to a slow warm smile as my barely opened eyes found the ‘prize’ proudly hanging on the wall opposite the bed. Invariably the first thing to catch my eye most mornings, it unfailingly cheered me.
But to go back a little, we’d always considered ourselves “unlucky”, at least when it came to gambling or winning prizes. It had become a family joke. Stories were repeated like the one when, newly married, we were taken by our Japanese friends to the Playboy club in Tokyo for their Bingo Night. Unbelievably, I’d won the top prize. So had another lady. In the tie, the Japanese lady won the handsome prize, and I was given a consolation prize – men’s handkerchiefs!
And then there was the time when my husband had teased me for buying raffle tickets at a pottery event. I’d won two tickets to New Zealand – but at a time when we had booked tickets for India! The organisers refused to change the dates although I had pleaded with them saying that the prizes were meaningless unless they could be used. Finally, my dear friend, Yasuko Tamai, took her mother for a memorable holiday in New Zealand! And so it went on until my ‘luck’, or the lack of it, became a joke to regale relatives and friends.
I used to retort,” Lucky in cards, unlucky in love, don’t you know?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” was all I got. We had had our shot at luck, though. There were a few occasions when we’d even chanced on ‘fortune’. Once, newly married and quite penniless, we’d stood on our rickety little balcony in Tokyo and seen a beautiful lady in a gorgeous silk kimono alight from a taxi in front of the imposing house across the road. Minutes later, when we went for a walk, we found an exquisite silk purse lying on the road in front of that same house. Peeking in, we found a bundle of 10,000 yen notes. Human, we’d looked at each other with awe and enquiry but knew what the answer had to be. We knocked on the door and tried to explain to the maid in broken Japanese about the purse. The maid, not comprehending the words, still grabbed the purse and shut the door in our face. Years later, while sharing with our children, our early years of struggle to make ends meet, we told them this story.
Our daughter too, when little, had found some money while shopping with me in a supermarket. She brought the note to me and we’d thought about what should be done. I asked her if the money belonged to her. She said, “No…but..we can’t return it for we don’t know the owner.”
“Good point”, I said and added,“So, we can’t return it and we can’t spend it because it doesn’t belong to us.”
“Hmm!” The child frowned in concentration. Then she beamed. “Why don’t we put it in the box by the door?” “Excellent idea!” said I. The supermarket, like all the others, was collecting money for the victims of the recent devastating Kansai earthquake. On the way back, I bought my daughter her favourite candy and hugged her closely.
Another memorable event was when my daughter and son, coming back from school, had found a box under a hedge near our house. They came in, shouting excitedly. I was teaching a student, and so took them into the bedroom to hear what had so excited them. My mother-in-law also came in to see the cause of the commotion. The kids showed us the box stuffed with a medley of gold jewellery, costume trinkets, some ornaments for grown ups mixed with baubles for children. It was clear that a thief had left this ‘treasure’ under the hedge, hoping to pick it up later. “I saw it first”, my son claimed triumphantly. “No way!” my daughter protested.
“Hush children, Mum has a student outside,” Grandma raised a brow. I had to make a decision in a hurry. Ignoring the children’s looks, I said “Ma, could you please take the children with the box to the little koban and hand this in to the policeman there?” Luckily, every area had it’s own koban, a ‘police box’ with one or two policemen to handle minor emergencies. “The children can interpret for you and help you fill any forms.” “You don’t think…” My mother-in-law began. “No, I don’t,” I said firmly and went back to my student.
It had not always been easy to teach the children to respect other people’s property and not to take what did not belong to them. As a three year old, my son had picked up a car we could not afford from a toy shop and had been marched back, made to return the car to the shop owner, and apologise.
Another time, he took some money from a drawer without telling us and was punished though we learnt later that he had been bullied by some ‘gambling’ seniors in the school to bring some cash from home.
One morning, years later, a thick envelope came through the post. I opened it, gave a squeal and sat down. My husband came running to see what the matter was and snatched the letter I held in my shaking fingers. It was from a famous Cornish food company and it contained a prize. We had been awarded the second prize in a competition open to the entire country. It was a holiday abroad with a stay in a five-star hotel with all meals included. This time there was no time limit! We could go anytime we wanted.
A letter was enclosed with the award certificate. Every year the food company selected from politics, sports, entertainment et al, an “honest celebrity of the year.” But this year, they had decided to add another category. It was for non-celebrities, ordinary folk, who were nominated by friends or family. The person nominating had to write true incidents explaining and justifying why their nominee deserved recognition. The letter my husband was now reading was from our children. They had nominated their parents for honesty and integrity and narrated some of the incidents starting with the lady in the silk kimono.
We looked at each other mutely with tears in our eyes.
Nobody could tease me for my luck any more. I woke up every morning to the biggest prize of all – my children’s letter, now framed on our bedroom wall.
Rani Rao Innes is the senior partner and lead trainer of Link Communications, a specialized communications skills company based in the UK. She has regularly presented courses and training workshops for private and public business sectors as well as students and teachers in the UK, Belgium, Malaysia, Japan and India. She has also been active in theatre for 30 years and was the director of Canterbury Players in Kent for eight years