PROFILE
On the surface, Anji’s a straightforward hedonist:
brash and opinionated, she loves drinking, drugs, sex
and having a laugh with her mates. Underneath, there’s
a steely ambition that few ever get to glimpse.
Anji is a Yorkshire girl through and through. She’s
lived in Leeds all her life. She slags it off as a dump,
but it’s where all her friends live, why move on?
She lived at the centre of a totally Asian community.
Her childhood was happy, her family loving and supportive,
but as Anji grew up she began to get restless. She found
the community’s introspection and self-imposed exile
frustrating: Asian culture archaic. She was much more
at home with her Black school-friends, and together they
looked to Black American culture for music, styles of
dress, and ways of behaving.
She started running with a gang
who experimented very early on with drugs and sex.
Her family were unsurprisingly scandalised, but the
more they yelled, the more she distanced herself
from them.
Although she has stayed in the city and still sees a lot of her family, she
has deliberately gone against all the traditions and expectations of her
community. Most of the time this gives her an enormous sense of empowerment – she’s
never constrained by religious or family ‘guilt’ - but sometimes
it makes her feel rudderless and isolated. So Kate was her saviour: a secure
and steadying influence, but one that never judged or dictated. Kate is the
first person Anji has ever sought approval from. Not that she’d ever
admit it.
Anji is fiercely protective
of her social life, and sees it as her duty to get
as trashed as possible as often as possible. Even
Lia at her peak didn’t have the appetite for
clubbing and partying that Anji has. Many men struggle
with her pragmatic, straightforward attitude to sex.
If she wants a shag, why shouldn’t she have
it?
She fell into nursing as a way
of paying the bills, but she isn’t hungry for
promotion – she knows that would mean more
work for not much more money. Ultimately, she wants
to acquire as much money as possible, doing as little
work as possible. Someone once suggested an arranged
marriage: even Anji appreciated the irony in that.
But Anji wants it all on her own terms.
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