Two Billion Beats

Sonali Bhattacharyya

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781839040726
• eBook ISBN: 9781788505321
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

'The smaller you are, the quicker your heart beats. But it doesn't matter what size your heart is, we all only get an average of about two billion beats over our lifetime. It's just a pump at the end of the day, right?'

Seventeen-year-old Asha is a rebel, inspired by historical revolutionaries and unafraid of pointing out the hypocrisy around her – but less sure how to actually dismantle it. Her younger sister, Bettina, wide-eyed and naive, is just trying to get through the school day without having her pocket money nicked.

With essays to write, homework to do, and bus journeys home, the two sisters meet every afternoon, outside the school gates, to tackle the injustice of the world.

Sonali Bhattacharyya's play Two Billion Beats is an insightful, heartfelt coming-of-age story and a blazing account of inner-city, British-Asian teenage life. It was originally presented in the Inside/Outside season, livestreamed from the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, before receiving a production there in this full-length version in 2022, directed by Nimmo Ismail.

Scene One

ASHA, seventeen, British Asian, empathetic rebel, reads a book in the corridor outside the sixth-form common room at her school, headphones in. The sound of an after-school club in the hall nearby can be heard faintly (basketball or something similar). ASHA’s sister, BETTINA, fifteen, a quiet daydreamer prone to flights of fancy, also in school uniform, enters.

BETTINA. You waiting for someone?

ASHA. What?

BETTINA. You waiting for someone?

ASHA turns down the volume on her phone with exaggerated annoyance.

ASHA. No.

BETTINA. What you doing, then?

ASHA (of her book). What’s it look like?

BETTINA. You can read at home.

ASHA. You can be an annoying little shit at home.

BETTINA. If we go now we can get the bus together.

ASHA. I’m alright, thanks.

BETTINA slings down her bag and gets comfortable.

What’re you doing?

BETTINA. I’ll wait ’til you’re done.

ASHA. Why?

BETTINA.…Forgotten my keys.

ASHA roots around in her bag and produces her keys, handing them to BETTINA.

Not taking yours.

ASHA. Why not?

BETTINA. What if I lose them?

ASHA. Then I’ll kill you.

BETTINA. Exactly. Who needs that sort of pressure?

BETTINA gives ASHA back her keys.

ASHA. If you’re going to hang around, find somewhere else to sit.

BETTINA. Why?

ASHA. You’re putting me off.

BETTINA. I’m not doing anything.

ASHA. Exactly. It’s weird, you just sitting there.

BETTINA. Let’s go then?

ASHA. No.

BETTINA just shrugs and makes herself comfortable.

(Direct address.) Basketball club finishes at five-thirty and the caretaker’ll be here to close up, so that’s when I have to head off. But I’m going to take my time walking home. Don’t want to get in any earlier than six-thirty. Mum will have left for work by then. She hasn’t spoken to me since I handed in my essay. Not when I knock to see if it’s her in the bathroom, ask her to pass me the remote, check if she wants a cup of tea… Nothing. God knows how long she’s going to keep it up.

BETTINA. What did you get on your essay?

ASHA. What do you care?

BETTINA. Just taking an interest, jeez.

ASHA takes her headphones out for a moment to recount recent events to the audience.

ASHA (direct address). You start with something surprising, something clickbaity. Mrs L loves that shit. She calls it ‘opening with a flourish’. Gandhi didn’t use his fists, but he was still a fighter. Round one! In the blue corner, we have…

Gandhiji! The unlikely featherweight looking to take on the growling, spitting bulldog of the British Empire. Gandhi lands the first blow – killer quote from me, I’ve done my research. ‘In a gentle way, you can shake the world.’ Pow. Then another one: ‘Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love.’ Bam.

But when considering ‘Can the pen be mightier than the sword?’ – keep dragging it back to the essay question. It’s important to remember Gandhi didn’t just write about his ideas, he saw them through in his own life. He wrote about fasting as a tool of resistance, because it’s one he used, against the British. Eighteen times! The longest he fasted was twenty-one days. Fasting was Gandhi’s favourite non-violent weapon, and sometimes he used it against his fellow Indians.

Boom, that’s the hook. Controversh. If you haven’t got their attention now, you might as well pack up and go home. Round two! A new opponent enters. In the red corner we have: B. R. Ambedkar. Say B. R. Ambedkar. And yeah, hundred per cent I know I’m schooling Mrs L because how would she have heard of him? I only found out about him, like, two months ago. Ambedkar, this Dalit, this untouchable, who beat all the odds, educated himself, rose to the highest ranks of the independence movement and drafted India’s first ever constitution versus The Mahatma himself. Ambedkar swings first – has the balls to say Gandhi doesn’t speak for the Dalits, because he isn’t one. Has the bare cheek to write a whole speech about how you can’t reform the caste system, it has inequality baked into the very core. That shit has to be blown up and you have to start again.

High-caste Hindus wouldn’t eat with Dalits. Wouldn’t let them live in their neighbourhoods, use the same water fountains, pray in the same temples… So how come Gandhi’s so against Dalits having separate elections in the new India, free from high-caste intimidation? Wham! Democracy is supposed to serve the people, not the other way round, right? Ambedkar said ‘I want political power for my community. That is indispensible for our survival.’ Mrs L said that one spoke to her from history.

But Gandhi’s squaring up, boxing clever. He hates Ambedkar’s speech. Thinks high-caste Hindus just need a bit of hand-holding to get them to see Dalits as human beings. Thinks if the issue’s forced there’ll be violence, bloodshed. Ambedkar counters: Dalits’ rights can’t wait. But Gandhi lands his killer blow and starts fasting. And like I said, that man can fast. Ambedkar looks around, sees a force-ten tornado coming right at him. What if Gandhi goes all out? What if he dies? Ambedkar’s entire community would be blamed. And you know whose blood would be shed then, right?

So Ambedkar concedes to Gandhi. His speech, ‘The Annihilation of Caste’, is never heard. You can read it online though, and he says in the intro he’s not a ‘persona grata’. Someone ‘acceptable’. I looked it up. So, in conclusion, the pen can be mightier than the sword, but it isn’t always clear if the right person wins, or even gets to speak in the first place. (To BETTINA.) I got eighty-five per cent.

BETTINA. Nice.

ASHA. Correct and appropriate use of archival materials – tick. Good understanding of the interpretations put forward in the extract – tick. Well-supported and convincing evaluation of the arguments – tick, tick, tick. Mrs L said, between me and her, it was the best mock exam paper she’d seen in all her years. Straight up, thought she was going to cry.

BETTINA. Lolz. Knocked it out Sunday evening between Assassin’s Creed sessions, didn’t you?

ASHA. Haha. Yeah… (Direct address.) No. Spent two weeks doing research and pulled three all-nighters writing three, no… four drafts… I sort of get lost in stuff, if it’s something I haven’t heard about before? Takes me a bit of time to work out what I think about it and it helps if I can get it all down on paper.

BETTINA. You told Mum yet?

ASHA. She won’t give a shit. (Direct address.) Like, Mrs L said she only started to really enjoy history after she discovered Emmeline Pankhurst, which is cool, but then she said I should draw on my personal experience more often too, and that was just weird.

BETTINA. Mum’ll be made up. This one’s close to her heart, isn’t it? Gandhi and that.

ASHA. She grew up in Evington.

BETTINA. I mean, it’s about our… you know, our roots, and stuff?

ASHA (direct address). Mum read the final draft before I handed it in. She found a printout on the dining table when she was clearing up before dinner. Went batshit. Forbid me from submitting it. Can you believe that? Kept saying who was I to slag off Gandhiji? How I’d got soft in the head. Been spending too much time on TikTok. Is this what influencers were telling me? Poisoning my mind against actual independence heroes. Said I should be ashamed. Said she was ashamed. Real talk, I thought she was going to have a stroke or something. Told me I had to rewrite it. Like, this is literally...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Contents
• Original Production Details
• Acknowledgements
• Characters
• Two Billion Beats
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information