The Diary of a Social Butterfly

by Moni Mohsin

  Anti-terrorism law amended in bid to curb sectarianism

  The Old Bag has vagina attack

  Guess what? The Old Bag has gone and had a heart attack! Last night only, while Janoo and I were sitting in the lounge, eating strawberries and watching Kaun Banay Ga Crore Patty, the phone rings and who should it be but one of the Gruesome Twosome, Janoo’s younger sister Saika. (I call her ‘Psycho’.)

  ‘Ammi chali gayeen,’ she wailed like a mad dog howling at the moon. ‘Tell Bhaijaan.’

  I said, ‘Bhaijaan’s busy watching Kaun Banay Ga Crore Patty and in any case, where’s she gone?’

  Psycho howled louder and louder until I couldn’t hear a word of TV, so I put the phone down and reached for the strawberries.

  ‘Who was that?’ Janoo asked.

  ‘Nobody,’ I replied. ‘Only Psycho.’

  ‘You mean Saika,’ he said in that sarrhial voice of his. ‘What was she saying?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Only that your Ammi’s gone.’

  ‘Gone where?’ he asked.

  I shrugged. Just then, museebat phone rang again. This time Janoo picked up.

  I was lying back on the sofa licking strawberry juice from my fingers when his colour went fak and he started shouting into the phone, ‘WHEN? WHERE? HOW?’

  Then he banged the phone down, turned to me and announced, ‘Ammi’s had a heart attack!’

  ‘Must be gas,’ I muttered. She’s always leaking gas, like an old boiler.

  ‘Get up!’ He snapped at me. ‘We’re leaving for her house right now.’

  ‘At least let me finish Kaun Banay Ga Crore Patty,’ I protested. ‘He’s just three questions short of a crore. And the servants will eat all the strawberries if I…’

  Janoo didn’t even let me finish the sentence. ‘Chalo!’ he shouted. As if I was his servant or something.

  You can imagine the rest. We sped off to The Old Bag’s house with him muttering away. ‘I’ll have to take her to London. I’ll fly her out tomorrow. Book her into the Cromwell. I’ll call Dr Khalid Hameed. There’s got to be a direct flight tomorrow.’

  Uss peh tau, my blood really boiled. Here I am begging every summers to go to London, and all The Old Bag has to do is get gas and she’s flown out immediately. And probably biz class too. Fat cow.

  ‘What’s wrong with Akram Complexed Hospital on Ganda Nala?’ I asked. ‘She’ll feel so at home on Ganda Nala. And anyway, I think so you’re gushing to conclusions here. Mind na karna, heart happens only to those who have heart, yani caring types like me. Mummy always said that when food went bad in the fridge I never allowed it to be thrown away, even as a child. I always gave it to the servants and insisted they eat it there and then, so caring I was…’

  Anyways, we got to The Old Bag’s house and there she was lying on her bed like a collapsed hippo with her eyes shut and muttering, ‘Hai, hai.’ She was being pressed by the Gruesome Twosome and all her three maids. The minute they saw Janoo they all started bawling like the Sabri brothers and hum nava. The Old Bag immediately sat up and grabbed Janoo’s hand and, with tears pouring down her face, started banging on about her ‘aakhri lamha’ and ‘aakhri farmaish’. I couldn’t help noticing, however, that respite claiming to have had a heart attack she still hadn’t taken off her thirty tola gold karas. They were still jammed on to her fat wrists. I swear, what a tamasha! And so bore also. I tau sat down on the sofa and helped myself to some fruit. Nice shareefas, but not as nice as Mummy’s house.

  Doctor came and did a check-up and then he asked her about her signs and systems. Apparently The Old Bag had been feeling some tightness in her chest. And breathlessness also. Naturally. If she will wear her shirts so tight what does she expect? All she had to do was to let out some seams and darts in her poplin shirts but no, she had to go and fake a heart attack. Anyways, doctor took Janoo aside while I was having my third shareefa and told him that she’d had a vagina attack. Bas, dekha, I said, it’s only vagina, not heart.

  ‘ANGINA!’ Janoo shouted.

  As if I’m deaf or something. This is the thanks I get for abandoning my TV and my strawberries.

  Musharraf, Vajpayee urged to agree on N-free zone

  Jonkers falls for Miss Shumaila

  You know, you can tell about people in one minute flat. Who is khandani and who is not. Now look at Princess Salimah Aga Khan, who visited Lahore a couple of months back. She is real Princess and all, you know, but sooo humble, sooo understated. I met her at a dinner and you know what? She didn’t even wear a crown. This is khandani pun.

  And then there’s Jonkers’ new crush: Miss Shumaila, his secretary, ek number ki chaaloo cheez. The way she phussaoed Jonkers is nobody’s business. Appearing so naik and shareef from the outside while being a total gold-dogger on the inside. And Jonkers, loser, fool, stuppid, he fell for her book, line and sinker.

  He’d call me a thousand times a day and sing her praises—Miss Shumaila this, Miss Shumaila that. I swear my ears had pukkoed. ‘She’s so respectable, so hard-working, so thrifty, so nice.’

  So I tau told him saaf-saaf: ‘Jonkers,’ I said, ‘listen to me. You are son of Pussy Khilafat, grandson of Mr Khilafat, great-grandson of um, um… Mr Khilafat Senior, great-great-grandson of Mr Khilafat Very Senior. How can you marry a nobody?’

  ‘She isn’t a nobody,’ he protested, his eyes shining dimly like twenty-what kay bulbs behind his inch-thick glasses. ‘She is Miss Shumaila and she is also somebody’s daughter and somebody else’s granddaughter and great-granddaughter.’

  ‘Oho, baba, she’s not somebody’s granddaughter, she is nobody’s granddaughter.’

  ‘How can you be so snobbish?’ he shouted.

  ‘Same way as you can be so stuppid,’ I shouted back. ‘She is after your money. And the minute she gets it, she’ll be off like a bullet from a Kalashnikov. You wait and see. And anyways, if she’s so marvellous, why don’t you introduce her to your mother? Hain? Why do you keep calling me, expecting me to do your dirty work for you? Persuading Aunty Pussy and all, hain? I’m telling you from now only, someone with a name like Miss Shumaila can only be a gold-dogger.’

  ‘She’s not!’ Jonkers shouted and slammed the phone.

  Ek tau this Jonkers has always been such a problem. So stuppid he is. So bonga. So trusting. Always falling for the wrong types with tight-tight shirts and lose-lose morals. There was that Aqeela, the hairdresser—actually hairdresser bhi nahin, blow-dryer—whom Aunty Pussy paid two lakhs to and peechha chhuraoed. Mummy and I used to call her Akela, the lone wolf. Then there was Typhoon, the telephone receptionist who said ‘foon’ instead of phone, and wore too much powder and too little deodorant. I was sure Aunty Pussy would cut Miss Shumaila’s card in no time, so I wasn’t very bothered. After all, Aunty Pussy isn’t known as ‘Pussy the Past Mistress’ for nothing.

  The next day while I was still in bed, phone rang. It was Aunty Pussy screaming herself historical. ‘That fool! That bloody damn fool!’ she shrieked. ‘He’s gone off to a mosque and got a nikah done to a secretary. A secretary! And he had the gall to bring that bold little number to the house and introduce her to me as his wife. His wife! I was so shocked, I dropped my teacup. Thank God it wasn’t my Rosenthal.’

  ‘Miss Shumaila?’ I breathed.

  ‘You know her? You knew about her? You knew that he was planning to run off and you never breathed a word?’

  ‘He never said he was going to run off, Aunty Pussy. Just that he had a crush. I thought it would pass, like malaria, you know. I tau even refused to meet her, you know. I could tell from her name only what she would be like. Is she like that?’

  ‘Worse!’ wailed Aunty Pussy. ‘Much, much worse. She calls toast “toash” and eats her omelette with a teaspoon! What shall I do-hoo-hoo?’

  ‘You should change your locker at the bank and hide the key. And you should take Jonkers’ name off your house and put it in your own again. And you should pack away your good shawls and your silver. And then, you should pray.’
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  God help Aunty Pussy.

  Democracy road map satisfies Commonwealth

  Butterfly purchases jamawar shawl

  I tell you, these shawl-wallahs, they’re the limit also. Last week this paan-and-surma type came with his bundle on the back of his motorbike. Wanted to sell me a shawl, a jamawar. Big-big paisleys with orange border. Asked for two lakhs. Said it was Nayaab.

  ‘Who’s Nayaab?’ I asked.

  ‘The shawl, Begum Sahiba,’ he replied. ‘The shawl is nayaab, you know, unique, one of a kind.’

  Now, I’m fine with shahtooshes and things. In fact, I have four—one beige, one green, one brown and one navy blue-and-grey rewindable. Sorry, sorry, I mean reversible. But jamawars are just so bulky, na, keh figure-shigure sub chhup jaata hai. I feel as if I’m wearing a duvet. So I was about to send the shawl-wallah off when I remembered that all my coffee crowd have jamawars. Mulloo, even.

  ‘How much?’ I asked.

  ‘Three lakhs,’ he said. ‘It’s over a hundred years old. Unteek hai, Begum Sahiba. Unteek.’

  ‘Antique-shantique koi nahin,’ I said. ‘One lakh. Not another paisa.’

  ‘One lakh 75.’

  ‘120.’

  ‘170.’

  We argued for an hour but he wouldn’t budge. So dheet, I tell you, these people are. And so greedy also. Fight over every paisa and every anna. Then I thought, forget it. In any case summers are here and I won’t get to wear this shawl for another seven months at least, so why should I let him eat my head for nothing?

  ‘Bas,’ I said. ‘I’ve decided. You give me the shawl for 120 and that’s final.’

  So he said: ‘Let’s not argue about money. Why don’t you keep the shawl overnight and think about it?’

  He’d just left when Mulloo called. ‘Hai, I’m so excited,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve fallen in love with this shawl, a really old antique jamawar with huge paisleys and this lovely tangerine-coloured border. That chor Kashmiri came to show it to me because he knows, na, that I am very tasteful, so immediately I saw it and bus, fell in love. But I can’t afford it because I bought diamond tops from Carat jewellers last month and Tony will kill me now if I ask for jamawar also, and I got so depress that I was popping three-three Prozacs but then suddenly I remembered the hideous gold bangles and necklace that I got from Tony’s family when we married that I’ve always hated because they’re so paindu, and so today I went to Carat and asked him to put a keemat on it and he said it was a lakh and now I think so I’ll call the shawl-wallah tomorrow and buy the shawl, will have to haggle a bit but I’m sure he’ll give for one-ten, hai, I’m so excited!’

  ‘But don’t you feel like you’re wearing a duvet when you put on a jamawar?’ I asked.

  ‘Who wears a jamawar, yaar?’ said Mulloo. ‘You just drape it off one shoulder. So classy it looks. Seema Iftikhar has such a nice collection. All the old-money, khandani types have them like other people have napkins.’

  So I put the phone down and immediately called the shawl-wallah and handed him 125. Cash. In crisp thousand rupee kay notes. He counted every note, as if I was some kind of jhoothi cheater or something. What happened to trust, to morals, to rakh rakhao, I ask you?

  No plans to ban jihadi group: Minister

  Butterfly attends grand wedding in solitary style

  Just my luck to be married to a buddhi rooh, killed joy. Here I am so gay, so gay keh koi hisaab nahin, and there’s Janoo more bore than Pal Gore. Only I can cope up with him. Koi aur hoti, she would’ve die-vorced him long time ago.

  Ab dekho, after all those long garmi months of no action, there was one tabahi shaadi—oho, Kasuris ki, baba. Three week long celebrations, khaana to die for, AC’d marquee, two thousand people, anyone who’s everyone, from Farooq Leghari and Asghar Khan to Irum and Amo. From Qazi Hussain Ahmed and Nawabzada Nasrullah to Deepak Perwana and Tariq Amin. Only people missing were Benazir and Nawaz. Hai, I forgot, they’re both in exile.

  Anyways, instead of being happy keh he’d been invited to itni socialist wedding, sorry, I mean socialite wedding, Janoo refused to go. Crack. Said he liked the Kasuris very much but found weddings boring. He said, suno zara, that he’d go after the wedding and wish them in peace and quiet.

  ‘But they haven’t invited you to wish them in peace and quiet, they’ve invited you to a wedding,’ I explained in that slow voice doctors use for cracks on TV. ‘Kal ko our child will be getting married and what will happen if everyone turns up after the shaadi to wish us? Haan? I’ll tell you what will happen. Our shamiana will be empty, our drive will have owls hooting, our food will lie uneaten and will have to be distributed at Data Sahib among the starving, and poor old Kulchoo will receive not a single lifafa and there’ll be no raunaq and no halla-gulla and no society photos and no video-wallahs. No one will compare notes on what a tabahi wedding it was. No one will copy the bride’s jora. No one will goss about the over-clothes the susraal wore. No one will ooh and aah over the jewellery I wore, and no one will come and say, “Bhai, only you could have done such a zabardast wedding.” You know what will happen at Kulchoo’s wedding? Nothing. Because no one will come. Our noses will be cut and our faces will be blackened. That’s what will happen.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Janoo, putting down his papers, ‘that would be most unfortunate. Most unfortunate indeed! Twenty years hence, Kulchoo will have a small, unremarkable wedding because of my regrettable lack of social skills. But fear not, my dear. I may be a social disaster but luckily you have yourself to rely on. The indefatigable socialite who hasn’t missed a single function of a single wedding in the 15 years that we’ve been married. Thanks to your heroic efforts we can count on at least 5000 people turning up at our son’s wedding. So, really, there’s no fear of having to feed the homeless at Data Sahib.’

  At that I decided, bus, I damn care. Let him be a loser if he wants, I’m tau going. So I put on my 55,000 ka jora, latkaoed Mummy’s ruby jhumkas with matching satlara and solitary ring, and off I went.

  First person I bumped into was Pooky, Janoo’s cousin sister, who’d tucked the sides of her hijab behind her ears to show off her massive emerald earrings. So cheap she looked. So obvious. She stared pointedly at my diamond solitary ring, which I was wearing on my right hand, and said, ‘Isn’t that the wrong finger?’

  ‘Isn’t Janoo the wrong man?’ I replied. Why should I chup raho? She gave me a sarrhial-si look and pounced off.

  But I also didn’t let her sarrhial comments spoil my fun. I went up to everyone and said at least eight hundred hellos. I know because I kept count. I have an electronic tasbeeh, na, and every time I said hello, I’d click. Later I checked, it was eight hundred and four. Some of them, for instant Asma Jehangir—the guests to whom I said hello, baba—I hadn’t seen for months. And others I hadn’t seen ever. Frankly, the ones I didn’t know looked a little startled, but I smiled brightly and said how nice they looked and how nice it was to see them and accha, ab main chalti hoon because I must ghullo-millo. I wonder if they thought I was crack? Never mind. Let them think whatever they want. After all, I’m not doing it for myself but for Kulchoo.

  Al Qaeda attacks New York and blows up the Twin Towers

  Butterfly loses her patience with Janoo for hogging the TV

  Pehlay tau chalo I’ve been doing guzara with Janoo, but if ever there was a time to get a die-vorce, it’s now. I swear, he spends his whole life in front of BBC and CNN, sometimes only he’ll switch to Star News. And kambakht, our cable is also fixed so that on channel 53 CNN hai, on 54 Star News and on 55 BBC hai. Ek news khatam hoti hai, tau doosri starts. Majaal hai that Kulchoo and me can switch to sensible channels like MTV or B4U or AXN. Bus, Janoo’s hooked on to this America versus Afghanistan drama. I said to Janoo, What’s so interesting now? Twin Towers have gone, Pantagone has gone, please switch to B4U. He gives me dirty looks and sticks to bore BBC.

  Yesterday, I tau let him have it. ‘If anyone should be upset, it should
be me. After all, Aunty Pussy, Mummy and me were planning a trip to New York and Mummy’s third cousin was coming to Pakistan, leaving her apartment and cat for us to look after for two whole weeks. Mummy’d said keh Pussy’ll look after the cat because she herself is quite catty. And then this planes-shlanes thing happened. Worst timing. Kya tha if they’d waited for another two weeks? Main ho hi aati New York.’

  Mummy says Masood only’s done it—bhai, Twin Towers, what else? Apparently, Masood is the Israeli intelligent agency that does lots of bad things all over the world.

  ‘Why’s it called Masood?’ I asked Mummy.

  She said, ‘You don’t know, beta, these Jews, they’re very clever. They’ve given it a Muslim name jaan keh so that hamara naam badnaam ho.’

  Look at them, I swear! Mummy says on that day, all four thousand Israelis who worked in World Trade Centre were told not to come to work. Masood warned them from before only.

  And then some people are saying that Bush had the planes flown into the Twin Towers himself only. Why? Haw, because he wanted an excuse to evade Afghanistan and then Iraq and then Iran and then Syria and then Sudan and then maybe Saudi also. He wants their oil, na. So bhooka he is.

  But Aunty Pussy, as usual, doesn’t agree. She’s always liked to be different, from the time when she was a little girl and wore only ghararas and ate only bhindis. Anyways, she says Pal Gore’s done it. Bush rigged the election and now Pal Gore’s gone and done this so that Bush’s government will fall. And everyone will say, look how incontinent he is! And look at the Indians. They’re so jealous, just because we’re best friends with America again. Reminds me of Basheeraan who lives in a shack in the slumps across the canal and used to do my waxing. When I chucked her out and hired her neighbour Hameedaan, she became so vicious keh poocho hi na. Just because we’ve got the Americans ki naukri, Indians are doing all sorts of proper-gainda on their TV.