The Diary of a Social Butterfly

by Moni Mohsin

  ‘Well,’ I replied sweetly. ‘You’ve accepted the invitation, so that’s Colonel Haathi sorted out, and Zebunnisa will take care of King Loius the ape, and Falaknuma of Balloo the bear… perfect! And Tony bhai is tau a natural Kaa the sssnnake. Really, with friends like you, who needs animals?’

  Later I told Janoo and he had a good laugh, but he said not to have the party at MacDolands because they put in too many addictives in the food. ‘Haven’t you read Fast Food Nation?’ he asked me.

  ‘Uff! How many of times do I have to tell you I’m not into cookery books?’

  Look at all those clueless MNAs who’ve gone to India to do talks. Musharraf should have sent me instead. So many heart-to-hearts I would have had with designers and jewellers and sari-sellers and hostesses. After all, that’s what they want, na? People-to-people contract? Tau bus, one me could have done the work of all those bumbling parliamentarians.

  Instead, I went to the Tariq Ali talk with Janoo. Janoo told me it’s the first time he’s spoken in Lahore since 1969.

  ‘Haw, tau all this time he’s been whispering?’ I asked.

  But I wish I’d gone to Furry’s coffee party instead. Her najoomi was coming to read the palms of all the girls there. She had predicated to Furry that she was going to have a surprise visit from someone with very expensive tastes. She got all excited thinking Jemima Khan was going to visit her. Instead, her house got burgled that night.

  US forces search for Saddam

  Butterfly embarks on massive ‘girl hunt’ for Jonkers

  God safe me from family. I said it in front of Janoo, and he said that there was a famous English poet or librarian or something—how you can become famous as librarian, God only knows—who also said that families stuck you up. But mine tau is really driving me around the bends. Ever since Jonkers’ wife, that razor-blade Miss Shumaila, left him, Aunty Pussy’s been after me to find him a new wife.

  ‘Tum itna bahar aati-jaati ho, you must know thousands of girls for him. You know we’re not choosy. Anyone will do.’

  Soch-soch keh mera dimagh kharaab ho gya. I mean how many girls can I produce for him? God forbid, God forbid, I’m not some Madam or something, you know. And after all Jonkers, poor thing, hai tau a real shweetoo but he still wears safari suits, aur voh bhi polyester, with no deodorant, and stammers so much, and uss se bhi worst, has no money since that flooze cleaned him out. Finally, after much calibration, I suggested someone new to Aunty Pussy.

  Okay, I accept she’s an elderly girl, thirty two or whereabouts, but comes from a theek-thaak family, not exactly khatay-peetay but theek-thaak. Father was middling-sa officer at Shells or Uni-Leavers, or maybe ICI even. Anyways, it was multinationalist company. Girl went to Convent. Of course, senior to me by many years. Not a craving beauty or anything, but nice in a simple-sa way. (But then, Jonkers is also not Shahrukh Khan.) When I suggested her to Aunty Pussy, she hit the ceiling.

  ‘You think my Jonkers is so desperate that he’ll marry an aged nobody from nowhere?’ she shouted. And then she banged on and on about this girl’s problem with her biographical clock.

  What the clock had to do with the girl I don’t know, but I said, ‘Take her clock to Kronos Time Centre on the Mall only. They’re expensive but they can fix anything. They even did Daddy’s grandfather. Clock, I mean.’

  Then I told her keh better do the wedding in the summers only, because nobody’s getting visa for London so you have a captive audience. ‘I’ll ask J&S event managers for a nice-si cut price theme,’ I said. ‘For instant, “Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham” would be so appropriate for Jonkers.’

  Us peh tau Aunty Pussy just lost it. Not over the theme, but the expense. ‘What do you think this is?’ she yelled. ‘The opening of a new hotel?’

  ‘Haw, Aunty,’ I replied, ‘in your times, the olden times I mean, it may have been okay to cook a deg and have a ladies-only milaad and chalo, shaadi ho gayee. But ab nahin chalta. These days you can’t even open an envelope, let alone a hotel, without an event manager. Didn’t I tell you I had Kulchoo’s birthday done by them also?’

  At that, she said I could take my rishta and my event managers and my Kronos Time Centre and go to hell. Next time I’ll see if my shoe even listens when she moans about her loser son.

  47 killed in Quetta mosque attack

  Butterfly’s neighbours burgled

  You know what’s happened, na? Our neighbours got thieves last night. Promise by God. They came in at fajar time, tied up the night watchman (they are poorish, you see, not like us who have proper security types with Kalashnikovs and khaki uniforms), herded the whole family, kids, shids, everyone, into the sitting room at gunpoint. And while the family sat quietly and watched, the chors cleaned them out. Took everything. Computers and DVD and TV and jewellery and silver and all the cash-vash—everything they took. Even their mobile phones they took. Everything they loaded into a van they’d brought, which they’d parked in the drive only. Imagine, right next door to our drive all this was happening.

  When they’d finished, the chors sat down the terrified family and said to them, ‘Vaisay we are very disappointed in you as a family.’ While they sat there mutely, not daring to breathe, the chief chor says, ‘Aren’t you going to ask why?’

  The father and mother exchanged glances and then the father stammered out, ‘W-why?’

  So the chor gestured towards them all with his gun and said, ‘Have you looked at the way you’re dressed? Specially your daughters? Wearing nighties, and those too, half-sleeved? Haven’t you thought how you will look if thieves came to your house? Luckily we are not the kind who will treat you badly or punish you for not being dressed properly in Muslim way, but times are bad these days. You should take more care.’

  And then they said khuda hafiz and left.

  So today I called Mulloo and told her.

  ‘I tau sleep in high-necked, long-sleeved shalwar kameez with my hijab tied tightly under my chin, and so do my daughters, Zebunnisa and Falaknuma,’ she said. ‘The chor was absolutely right, times are bad.’

  So I charged into Janoo’s study and yelled at him that instead of two-two S&M guards, I want four-four at night. ‘And instead of obsessing about the war on tourism and weapons of mass distraction and Guacamole Bay thousands of miles away, you should be paying more attention to what’s going on in your neighbour’s house.’

  But thanks God I didn’t have too big a fight with him, because it expired later that he’s just put a down payment on a house in the hills. Now that he refuses to go to London and New York he’s buying a house in the hills, finally.

  Except that it’s not in nice, desirable Nathia, but in dull old Changla where no one goes. When I discovered, I hit the fan. ‘But the in crowd is all in Nathia!’ I yelled.

  ‘That’s precisely why I’ve bought in Changla Galli,’ he smirked.

  ‘How did you find anything in Godfortaken Changla?’ I asked.

  ‘Serendipity,’ he said.

  ‘Who’s she?’ I screamed.

  ‘No one you are ever likely to know,’ he replied.

  Must be some cheapster like Jonkers’ Miss Shumaila. What else can you expect from losers like them?

  American forces hunt for WMDs in Iraq

  Janoo kills Butterfly’s plans for a beautiful summer

  ‘Bore, bore, bore! That’s what I am,’ I told Janoo yesterday.

  ‘I quite agree with you,’ he replied with his sarrha hua smug-sa smile. ‘You are an awful bore.’

  ‘I am not bore,’ I screamed, ‘life is bore. No visas to London and no visas to New York, no visas nowhere. All I can do is sit here and sarrho and die in this horrible clammy heat.’

  ‘But you have a perfectly lovely cottage perched on a hilltop at the edge of a pine forest in Changla Galli,’ he argued in that argumentative way of his. ‘If only you could see it for the gorgeous place that it is.’

  ‘Gorgeous, your head!’ I said. ‘Why can’t you be like everyone else and buy a kothi in Nathia inste
ad of a hut in Changla? That way I could have met the same people that I meet every day for coffee, lunch and dinner in Lahore, and so nice it would have been.’

  Janoo’s only purpose in life, I think so, is to spoil my life.

  Had he bothered to get me a place in Nathia, I could have gone roaring up the twisted hill roads in our Land Cruiser, exhaust blowing, music blaring and all the windows up to show that even in Nathia I can’t live without AC. I’d be sitting in the back with my Versace shades and silk kurti over tight jeans, diamond tops glinting, hair blowing lightly in the breeze—sorry, forgot windows are up, so hairs can’t blow—latest copy of Vogue lying open beside me, so everyone knows I’m parha-likha, and Filipina maid in the dicky surrounded by Samsonight suitcases—latest-wallay, obviously—and Kitchen Cuisine cartons and massive bottles of Nestlay ka pani. And on our backside, a small Suzuki following with our cook and sweeper. Baba, if I don’t have my bathroom washed down every day I tau can’t go. So sweeper is must.

  But I’m damned if I’m creeping off to Changla with nobody to watch and nobody to make jay. Much rather stay puts. Janoo, of course, is threatening to go off with Kulchoo. Go a thousand times, I told him, for all I care. Get off my nerves. It’s all his fault anyways that I’m stuck here for the whole of the summers. Anybody who had a little bit of get up and go has got up and gone to London. All you had to do, I told Janoo, is to maro your hands and feet a bit and we’d also be sitting in Royal China in Baker Street where all the Sindhis and Karachiites go to have dimp sump, instead of which I’m stuck in Main Market. How else, do you think, everyone else has got visa? After all, Bunny’s been, Sadia’s been, Rabia’s been, Amina’s been—and Janoo says I can’t go. Bhai, why? Because he says he refuses to gravel in front of the goras for a visa. As if he was some Nawab Sahib’s son who can’t lower himself by gravelling like everyone else. Donkey. Dog. Crack. Kameena.

  Israel refuses to allow Palestinian refugees to return

  Butterfly does London

  Finally, we’ve made it to London. Sales-shales are all finished but I’d warned Janoo from before only that sales or no sales, Dior ka saddle bag must hai for me.

  ‘A saddlebag? What’s that?’ he asked in that weary, half-ill voice of his.

  ‘A handbag, baba, what else? Or “purrss”, as your mother would call it.’

  ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘How should I know? All I know is that Mulloo says everyone who’s anyone’s got it.’ And that’s reason enough to buy it.

  So yesterday as soon as I got out of taxi and into flat and put my suitcases down, I went straight to Harrods. Poor things, Dodie and Diana were there in the window. Big-big portraits with lots of flowers. Itna main ne feel kiya, na, I can’t even tell. Stood and said prayers for them. Then I wanted to do something in remembrance of Diana and suddenly I remembered how much she used to love shopping. Tau phir I went in and daba keh, na, main ne shopping ki. Every time I bought something I thought of her. Dior bag, her favourite make. Four pink Channel ki lipsticks, just like she used to wear. Versace dark glasses, like she wore to Versace’s funeral. Goochy high heels, in size six like her. Six pairs. Just my little way of keeping her memory alive.

  Bumped into Mehreen in the beauty hall, by the Easter Lauder ka stand. Bhai, Mehreen Moodi, who else? They’re here to drop their kids off at college, na. Like Haroon and Sadia. And the Lakhanis also. Now that American visas are so hard to come by, people are turning to England universities. Even though they don’t give financial aids.

  Vaisay sometimes I wonder whether Kulchoo should even go to college. Itna strange ho gya hai, na. Last week he went on at me about some carnival in a place called Nodding Hill in London. I asked around and found to my horror keh it’s some kind of African ki demonstration. I had no intention of sending him, but Janoo as usual took his sides and said it was culturally expending and took him off.

  So I also went off to do some cultural expension myself. I went to see Bollywood Dreams. Hai, so nice it was, itna enjoy kiya, na, main ne. I tell you, there’s no one like AR Rahman, particularly now that he’s a Muslim.

  Next day Janoo asked if I wanted to come with him and Kulchoo to see some stuppid-si exhibition in a place called National Portraits Gallery and then something else at British ka Museum. But I thought, kya time waste karna? Instead I went with my friend Bunty to Royal China on Baker Street where Karisma Kapoor had lunch last week. Voh tau nahin thi but lots of Sindhis were there, flashing diamond nuggets and Channel ki glasses. So flashy they are. I had chicken corn soup, egg fried rice and prawn sweet-and-sour. Shouldn’t say because it sounds ungrateful, but Dynasty in Lahore is better. Less pheeka. And now that I’ve done everything that I’d come to do in London I can go back. Right in time for Muddy Hashwani’s wedding in Isloo and Dubai.

  US concerned about Afghan border security

  Butterfly concerned about her missing bike

  I swear these poor peoples are so illiterate. So ignorant. On top, they never even listen. Who? Oho, servants, baba! Who else? For years, I’ve told Aslam (the cook, bhai) till my voice has gone horse to stop having children one on top of the other. Did he listen? Taubah karo. Why should he? After all, I’m providing the quarter, the roti-kapra, the gas-bijli-water. And all the food from the kitchen that he steals also—a chicken and a milk carton here, a sack of rice and a bag of sugar there. And then Janoo pays for his children’s school and for their books also. Aslam tau must be a millionaire by now. His whole celery goes straight into his pocket, all six thou of it.

  He’d worked with The Old Bag, Janoo’s mother, na, ever since he was a child. His father was their masaalchi. So when we got married he came in my trousers, I mean trousseau. I tried to get rid of him many times, because he used to spy on me and report everything to The Old Bag and the Gruesome Twosome.

  ‘Today they cooked this, costing that much, and tomorrow they are expecting so-and-so, and Begum Sahib waked at this time, and Sahib went out that time,’ and on and on and on.

  But Janoo wouldn’t allow me to sock, sorry, sack him. ‘You think he’s a spy and a fifth columnist, don’t you?’ he asked me.

  ‘Who, me?’ I asked innocently, wondering who the other four communists were.

  Anyways, in ten years Aslam managed to have six children while Janoo and I only managed Kulchoo. Mummy and Aunty Pussy know all about these peoples. They say they think about ‘That Thing Only’ and that’s why they have so many children. Not like us, who’ve got so many things on our mind and so many worries.

  Now Aslam’s second son, eight-year-old Billa, has gone and got lost, along with the cycle I’d provided for trips to the market. I mean, just look at them! They send the child out on my bicycle without even my permission, and at 7:30 pm so that it’d be dark and the guard couldn’t see who was taking the cycle. And what for? To get a midwife from the market because Madam is too scared to tell me she’s having a miscarriage. On the way, the kid fell into a ditch, damaged the cycle, searched his pockets and discovered he’d lost the five-hundred-rupee note advanced payment to the midwife. So he went crying to the fruit-seller at the entrance to the bazaar.

  ‘How can I go home now?’ he cried to the fruit-seller. Then he took the cycle and wondered off into the night. That much we learnt from the fruit-seller.

  That was five days ago. Billa hasn’t been seen since and neither has the cycle. Aslam and Madam are wailing all day long, the food’s being cooked by the bearer or being sent for from Dynasty Chinese or Punjab Club. On top, Janoo’s accusing me of insensitivity.

  ‘It’s all my fault, I suppose,’ I shouted. ‘I tau at least tried to put her on the pill. Did you ever try and get him to use condominiums? Or get his bits snipped off?’

  PS—While I was writing this inside, there was a big fuss outside and it respired that Billa had been found. He’d gone to Janoo’s mother’s house and was skulking around there in her servants’ quarters, too scared to come home and tell about the broken bike and the lost money. And look
at her servants, so mean they are, they never even told! For five whole days they were hiding him and they didn’t tell. When The Old Bag returned from Sharkpur today she found him there and brought him over. Now she’s sitting beaming in our drawing as if she was some big detective like Hercule Parrot or something, and the boy’s crept off to his mother, who has probably got another baby in her belly already. Honestly, I tell you, these peoples are also the limit!

  Pakistan clinches $341m arms deal with Pentagon

  Butterfly attends a ball dressed as Suzy Wrong

  I just couldn’t belief my years when Janoo asked if I wanted to go to the Latent Rehmatullah Ball in Isloo. ‘Are you mad?’ I shrieked. ‘It’s the social event of the year and you’re asking if I want to go?’

  For my outfit I called Shamael in Karachi and said, ‘Hai, please help, na. Please send me an appropriate outfit?’

  So she said she’d send me a Suzy Wrong or somebody’s outfit by DHL. I wanted to tell to her that I don’t want to wear secondhand but didn’t because I thought keh Karachi ki top designer hai, mind na kar jaye. Now let’s just hope this Suzy Wrong or whoever she is doesn’t have BO.

  Then Aunty Pussy begged me to take Jonkers along to show him a girl or two. Uff, how bore, I thought, but chalo, at least we’ll be able to go in her big Merc with gun man and all. Arrive in some style. Not like riding shamefacedly in Janoo’s three-year-old Corolla. The ball was faaabulous, with red velvet tent, orchids, and me in my Wrong dress.

  Only fly in the ornament was that we had to sit with Janoo’s bore Oxbridge friends, who spent all evening exchanging long-long, bore-bore stories from their past times about university dawns (I think so they call teachers ‘dawns’ at Oxbridge) and college porters (they must be luggage carriers like our coolies at airports) and getting the Blues (or was it booze?) in cricket and rowing-showing. And then some loser, who was too poor to afford a car as a student even, started telling about how his cycle had got stolen one night from outside his college. So then I also started on a long story about how our cook pretended that the cycle we’d given him to do the groceries and all had got stolen while he’d been inside the butcher’s shop in the bazaar but when I threatened to call the police, he quickly said that maybe the butcher would know and he went and promptly got the bike back.