There was a piece of photographic evidence that the Committee claims it lost; they claim they saw it, but, since they weren’t sure of its authenticity, it was sent to the Colorado Institute of Authentification of Pictures and Symbols and was lost in the mail. According to the Committee’s notes, “It’s a blurred picture but you can see a peacock, its wings stretched upwards, and framed in it was a head shot of Alice Bhatti as if she was dressed for a fancy-dress party.”
What were they thinking? Do they think that our poorly paid nurses with twelve-hour, six-day shifts, with a one-and-a-half-hour commute on each side have the time to go to fancy-dress parties? In peacock costumes?
I, Joseph Bhatti, father of Alice Joseph Bhatti, retired janitor for the Municipal Corporation, resident of French Colony, have been compelled to make this petition because Bishop Massey wrote in a side note that the peacock motif was a clever ploy to appeal to the European members of the Committee who make up the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, to give a touch of the exotic to this rather implausible fable and play upon the members’ preconceived notion of our country.
In their so-called investigation, the Committee didn’t take into consideration the biographical detail, which has been substantiated from multiple sources, that when Alice was twelve, I, her father Joseph Bhatti, rescued a baby peacock from the sewer and gifted it to her soon after her mother had been taken by Him. In my line of work I have rescued dead and almost alive human foetuses, hens, kittens, piglets, jewellery boxes and more puppies than I care to remember. It was said in the report that Alice Bhatti had claimed that she was brought up by a peacock mother. I am sure she said no such thing. It was a peacock, a male peacock, a dumb pet, and it had no hand in her upbringing and no part in the miracle of that night. The peacock could have easily become someone’s meal. I am sure the members of the Committee have never been in a situation where they have contemplated eating a fancy pet. This was food for our people, not exotica. I saved it from becoming someone’s dinner. And as far as her upbringing is concerned, I take full responsibility.
And what about the other witnesses, those who have nothing to do with the Sacred, or the Church, and those who hardly knew Alice Bhatti? There were at least eight witnesses who swore they saw a Toyota Surf floating two feet above the ground with its hazard lights on just before the likeness of our Holy Mother appeared on the roof of the OPD.
And what about the miraculous recovery experienced by that fat legless wretch who hobbled around the hospital with a skateboard stuck between her arse cheeks begging for Xanax? The lame shall walk, we were promised. And here the lame were skateboarding up and down a ramp so steep that even our ambulances find it hard to negotiate it.
As Our Lady of Alice Bhatti’s peacock throne began to ascend and the kites became still in the air, their wings folded in respect, the same legless wretch came down the ramp skateboarding like a demon, standing on the board with her arms spread as if she had inherited the factory that manufactures Xanax.
As mentioned earlier in this submission, in our neighbouring country a Caucasian nun starves poor people to death and is declared a saint. Here our poor Alice Bhatti cures the incurable and is declared a common criminal. Although she herself never claimed to have any miraculous powers, she always said, “It’s Him who cures. I just stitch up what has been cut open by life.”
All of the seventeen people who saw the apparition couldn’t bear to watch the face of the apparition on the throne because it was so luminous, like the sun on a very hot day. It was only the mad skater who claimed that a gust of wind blew in her direction and unveiled the face for a moment and that She looked like a ghoul. The Committee pounced on the word — some suggested that they actually inserted it in the text of the report — and concluded that a holy apparition couldn’t look like a ghoul. Does the word ghoul or its synonyms not appear in the Old Testament? Is the word forbidden? If you ask me, half our clergy look like ghouls.
The Committee also noted that if Alice Bhatti was considered so exalted at the Sacred after the miracle of the dead baby, why did she breathe her last at another, Musla hospital? First thing is, martyrs usually don’t die amongst their own. (Lots of Musla martyrs do, but that is beyond the scope of this submission.) The second explanation is that the Sacred doesn’t have an Acid Burns Unit, and it was Dr Pereira who put her in the ambulance and rushed her to another hospital, where her mortal body breathed her last. This was another one of Dr Pereira’s futile mercy missions. As far as I am concerned, she had ascended to the heavens before that first drop of acid touched her face.
So the question remains, what did people see that night? Did they see only our Holy Mother? Or did they see Alice Joseph Bhatti — it pains me to remind you, my daughter Alice Bhatti — ascend with her to the heavens?
There is only one thing left to do, and that is to tell the complete story of Alice Bhatti, her birth and suffering and marriage and miracles associated with her, and then leave it to the people to decide whether she deserves to be recognised as Our Lady of Alice Bhatti. It’s being done in the hope that common people hopefully don’t share the prejudices of those who in the name of our Holy Lord have set up bloodsucking business ventures.
And since Sister Alice Bhatti’s story can’t be told without telling the story of her time at the Sacred, why not start the story when Alice Bhatti came to the Sacred, looking for a job?
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