The Diary of a Social Butterfly

by Moni Mohsin

  So I thought enough is enough, and I called up a brain ka doctor whose number Mummy gave me. Over the phone I told him that I thought my husband was going mad.

  ‘Why?’ he asked me.

  ‘Because he’s behaving so strangely,’ I said. ‘He’s lost all interest in life.’

  ‘Please describe his symptoms.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘where do I start? He won’t go to GTs. And he won’t take any interest at all in who I met at my coffee parties and what they wore and what they said. And he is least bothered about my best friend’s husband’s new car, which is bigger and more expensive than ours. And nor does he want to know who went on holiday where and how much of shopping they did and how big their bill was. He isn’t interested in Bollywood, not even Shahrukh Khan. He didn’t even want to know when I told him that one of our GT crowd Billa had left his wife and run off with his telephone receptionist. Imagine! That’s how ill he is. And if that wasn’t enough, he spends all morning—at least two hours—reading newspapers and all evening reading books. And in his time off he watches TV and shouts at me when I switch the channel from BBC to Fox. I think so you need to give him Prozac.’

  ‘I think,’ said the doctor, ‘that I need to give him some sympathy.’

  ‘Doctor,’ I said, ‘you are crack.’ And I slammed the phone down.

  US weapons for Pakistan will hurt peace talks: India

  Butterfly gets central heating

  So many decisions I have to make these days. Like whether to have the floors pulled up and central heating put in. So cold it gets now, for at least one full month. And gas heaters are sooo last millennium.

  And whether to tell Mulloo that her maid is having an affair with Fluffy’s driver. I know because my Filipina, Sandra, saw them. Or whether to wait till Mulloo’s being more obnoxious than usual and then tell her.

  And whether to have my eyebrows lifted and my neckline lowered.

  And whether to send the cake that Psycho sent for Janoo day before yesterday to The Old Bag as a birthday present.

  And what to wear at the Good Times magazine launch party for which Mira Nayyer is coming, hai, jiss ne nahin banai thi Monsoon Marriage? I think so she’s also made something called Salaam Vanity and Bombay Fear…

  Uff, taubah, so much to think about. And then Janoo says I never think.

  Tsunami hits Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka, India

  Butterfly attends fifteen parties in three days

  I’ve also got such bad kismat. The party season’s on my head and I’ve gone and got bronckite-us. So much of fever I’ve had. And cuff. And cold. And nothing’s helped. The only thing that’s helped is a homo. (Pathic, bhai.) Homo-pathics are very in these days. Doctors ko tau koi poochta hi nahin hai. And good thing also: jab poocho antibionics transcribe karr detay hein. Antibionics take karr-karr keh my intesticles have rotted, I swear.

  But despite of my illness, I’ve not missed a single party or shaadi. Because I know how much people look forward kar rahe hotay hain to my coming. So first I went to Sheheryar Ali’s wedding. Bara fit scene tha, with fountains and peacocks and jewels to die for. Nice plot they have for a party, vaisay. Big-big, open-open. And the best address in Lahore: 1 FCC.

  Then there was that lunch for Sara Guleri. Bhai, jiss ne write kee thi na voh book Meatless Ways. She teaches at Yales. She’s written a new book called Boys Should Be Boys. Lunch was nice but I left before the guest speaker’s speech because I didn’t want to miss the final episode of Kyunke Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi.

  But imagine what happened when I got home? Kulchoo was watching The Meekest Link on BBC. I told him to switch it off but he said first I had to buy him a Sony Flatron for his room. Look at him! When did he get so materialistic? So matlabi? Where does he learn it from? Must be school only. Everything bad comes from there only.

  Anyways. Then there was Ahmad Rashid’s Christmas party, full of left-wings-wallay, you know, Rashid Rehman, Najam Sethi, Ijaz-ul-Hasan, and the whole NGO crowd. Wearing khaddar and talking bore-bore things like politics and econmics. Food was good, but. Turkey and lamb roast and crispy salads with lovely dressing gowns.

  After lunch mujhay thori si weakness ho rahi thi, but then I took two of my homo pills and drove out to Bali’s Bedian bash. Everybody was there, including Shaukat and Marina. (Bhai, voh New York wallay.) I hear she knows everybody who’s everybody, including Coffee Annan, Moody Allen and Paris Sheraton, sorry, Hilton. Main nay daba keh PR kee, rushed around saying hello to everyone—even those I didn’t know, because I thought if they are at Bali’s they must be important or rich or both. Preferably both.

  Musharraf pledges to hunt Uzbek militants

  Butterfly gets tricked by her cook

  Ek tau this tsumani is also not stopping. Now it’s also come into our house. Taken off all our servants and all our clothes. It began with the new Bingo cook, Qamar-ul-Islam (didn’t I tell you I finally managed to get rid off Aslam, The Old Bag’s agent? He went back to her only). Qamar came and told me the wave carried off his entire village and he must go back home just now only to find his family, all of which is missing.

  ‘Six daughters, five sons-in-law, four sons, four daughters-in-law, 25 grandchildren and one wife, all missing?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, Begumshobji,’ he cried, dabbing at his eyes with his apron. ‘All missing. House gone, family gone, cattle gone, life gone.’

  First tau I felt like saying, ‘And who’s going to cook the big khaana I’m having for forty people next week?’ But then I thought of Janoo sitting in front of the TV, shaking his head, and muttering, ‘What a disaster!’ At the time I’d thought he was talking about The Old Bag, who is a walking-talking disaster, but later I realised he meant the tsumani. So I put a big pathar on my heart and said to Qamar that he could go but first I must check with Sahib.

  ‘No, Begumshobji, let me go just now only,’ he pleaded. ‘I beg you.’

  So, being the saint that I am, I retented, and on top gave him twenty thou also to help rebuild his house. He left grinning from ear to ear. It made me feel so good, na, helping the needy like that. I swear I felt jannat ki hawa on my face.

  When Janoo came home I told him of the big sacrifice I’d made. ‘Qamar’s gone,’ I said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To East Pakistan.’

  ‘You mean Bangladesh.’

  ‘Whatever,’ I replied airily.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I think so we gave them freedom. And they chose a new name.’

  ‘Not Bangladesh,’ snapped Janoo. ‘Qamar. Why’s he gone?’

  ‘Because,’ I said, speaking very slowly as if to a retarded child, ‘his village has been swept away by the tsumani. And his whole family’s missing.’

  ‘The only thing that’s missing,’ shouted Janoo, ‘is your brain. Don’t you ever listen to the news? The tsunami never got to Bangladesh!’

  So when Sandra, my Filipina, came and said she wanted to take early chutti and go home to Vanilla, I blew a fuse. ‘I suppose your family’s missing also. Well, missing or not, no one is going from here till I say so.’

  Then on top, at Kulchoo’s school they’ve asked for donations for the tsumani victims. Can be anything—money, kapras, blankets, food, Kulchoo said. Pehlay tau I told him we’d already bought our qurbani ka bakra and that’s our donation done and delivered. But then he told me Fluffy’s son brought lots of clothes and tins of food, all packed by his mother in a neat brown parcel. Since Janoo is always doing burh-burh about my having too much of clothes, I thought chalo, let’s get rid of all the ugly stuff I received at my wedding from The Old Bag. So I packed up a huge sack full of clothes: horrid old kaam-wallay ghararay and kimkhab ke churidars and tissue ki saris and golden platform sandals and, best of all, Janoo’s grandfather’s shaadi ki kimkhab ki achkan. Teach him to shout at me again! On top I also sent the bakra to the school. They can ship him off to Nepal, which I hear has been worst struck by the water.

  But what to do about the lunch? I th
ink so I’ll just cancel it. Anyways, it was only Janoo’s family. They can all do with skipping a meal, obese jaisay cheapsters. I’ll tell them that I’m donating the money from the lunch to the tsumani revivors.

  US agrees to sell F16s to Pakistan

  Butterfly ponders the merits of a hair transplant

  Haw, look at Shahbaz Sharif! Or actually, don’t! You may not recognise him with his new hairs. Dekho zara, ex-thief minister, sorry, sorry, I meant chief minister. Honestly, kya ho gya hai mujhay? Tomorrow I’ll forget my own name. Janoo says it’s the onset of premature dementia. Ji nahin, I said, premature ho gay tum. I tau am always fashionably late. Anyways, so where was I? Haan, Shahbaz! I’d forgotten he’d had a hair transport until he announced his third marriage. I thought only young men—like in their twenties, baba—who start going bald and can’t nail rishtas, get new hair. Not senior citizens. But then I suppose if you’re marrying another senior citizen then you want to show, na, that there is still lots of dum in you.

  But what I want to know is why Nawaz Sharif has also gone and got a rug on his head? He’s not getting married again. Or is he? You never know with men, vaisay. Men can do anything anytime. That’s what Mummy says. Not that poor old Daddy has ever done anything. He tau doesn’t even dye his hair. But so nice he looks, na, so nice, with his grey-grey-se baal to match his grey-grey-si outlook. For that matter, even Janoo looks a bit like Richard Gayer. But bechara doesn’t have the body, or the crinkly smile. Or even the Pretty Woman, as Janoo himself says.

  ‘No, darling, you tau just have a crinkly face,’ I said.

  But he does have the grey-grey-se baal. That much I will give him.

  Anyways, I must dash. Have to go to Isloo, na, to do afsos with General Sahib for fautgi in his family (by the way, who exactly’s died?). Lahore tau is wearing such deserted looks these days because everyone is in Isloo doing afsos.

  Thanks God for the Lahore Book Fear. If it wasn’t for the Indians who’ve come, Lahore tau would have been totally lonely. Only pity is just the booky types have come. No film stars, no shrieking socialites, no business magnets. Just the quiet librarian types with cloth bags and grimy glasses. Par chalo. Something is better than nothing.

  Musharraf and Manmohan push forward peace process

  Car loans are hateful: Butterfly

  Summers are coming. Fans are on. Car mein tau AC is must. Vaisay, have you noticed how much of traffic there is on the roads suddenly? Yesterday it took me full hour to get home from Liberty Market. I’d gone to Saleem Fabrics to check out the lawns but it would’ve been quicker to fly to Dubai and done my shopping there only. Janoo says it’s because of all the car loans. The traffic, not the shopping. I know, I said. Every Tom, Dick and Hairy’s got a car now. Even my waxing-wali’s son’s got one.

  Honestly, some of these new Suzuki-wallahs don’t know how to drive even. Barging in from left, right and centre, taking up our parking spaces and behaving like real upstarters. Yesterday, when one stole my parking space outside Habib Bank just seconds before my driver was turning in there and I stuck my head out of the window and screamed at him, you know what he did? He said, ‘This is a public parking lot, not your private plot!’ And then slammed his car door and sauntered off, whistling with hands in trouser pockets.

  Imagine! The guts! And you know what he looked like? Like one of those clerks, all thin and reedy, who used to quietly, uncomplainingly work for hours and hours in Daddy’s outer office where there used to be only punkhas and no ACs. And now they’ve got cars! And tongues! As Daddy says, ‘Bhutto has a lot to answer for!’

  Really, they shouldn’t be given loans and they shouldn’t be allowed to drive! I’m saying for their own goods only. Tomorrow they’ll bang up the car and who will pay the loan, hain? They tau will default and it will be tax-paying, shareef citizens like Janoo and me who’ll be left with the bill. I said as much to Janoo and in respond he gave me a funny-si look. Let him give! I damn care. He’s also such a two-faced hippocrit, na.

  Why? Haw, how you can ask? Pehlay when we won the test match he said he was going to watch the one-day in Delhi. Then when we lost the one-days, in Coaching and that other place, Vishakawhatever, he says what’s the point? Of going to Delhi!

  ‘Point?’ I screamed. ‘Point? I’ll tell you what’s the point. Parties are the point. Seeing is the point. Being seen is the point. Coming on TV is the point. Sarrhoing Mulloo is the point. Enjoying is the point. Shopping is the point.’

  Then I told him what’s NOT the point. Cricket is NOT the point. Bore thuk-thuk with bat is NOT the point. All those silly mid-offs and square legs and perverse swings and bore-bore things. They are NOT the point.

  Well, if I’m not going to Delhi I’m going to Karachi for Habib Fida Ali’s birthday party. It’s his seventieth and very reclusive too. For a hundred and fifty people only. He’s invited Flopsy and she said she’d take me along. But what to give him, yaar? Crystal bowel? But I’ve heard he likes ethnic. Flopsy says he has miniatures and Gandhara and that sort of stuff. So shall I give kimkhab cushions? Very nice ones they are selling on backside of Ashraf Ali, Qamar Ali. With golden tassles. Or maybe camel-skin lamp. Or how about marble vase? That’s ethnic, isn’t it? So much of headache. I think so I’ll just buy him Versace dark glasses from Agha’s only. If it’s one thing you can never have enough of, it’s Versace dark glasses. And Goochy bags. And diamonds. And plots. And Prados. And servants. And bank accounts. In sterling, but. Baki tau, I’m always doing shukar Allah and all.

  Lahoris participate in mixed marathon

  Janoo goes junglee

  Janoo’s just come back from a week in the mountains. Because he hasn’t started building on his own plot yet, he borrowed Mouse and Zaheer’s cottage in Changla Galli (their friends call it ‘The Mousetrap’ because it cost a lot and took a long time to complete). Janoo said he wanted the peace of the hills. I told him I also want a piece of the hills, but I want a seven-bedroom kothi on it with servants’ quarters and guest sweet and not a cute-sa cottage. But meri kaun sunta hai? Anyways, he came back very pleased with himself. I asked what he did do there and he said he went for long walks, watched DVDs and read by a log fire. Loser.

  Went to a GT at Mulloo’s last night. Dragged Janoo along just in case people think he’s left me. You know how suspicious people are in this town. Always thinking the worst.

  Of course, the minute we got in Mulloo asked me in her shrill voice, ‘Haw, you didn’t go to Changla? Why, but? There isn’t some khutt-putt between you two, is there?’ she said, smiling like a fox who’s just seen a fat, defenceless hen.

  ‘Not at all,’ I replied airily. ‘It’s just that it’s simply too bore for me. Take away the mountains, the forests, the waterfalls and the views and what’s it got? Nothing!’

  And then Janoo, bore that he is, started banging on and on about the joys of Changla and how lovely it is to spend time amid nature. So of course Tony—he is so competitive, na, that he’d strangle his own twin in his mother’s stomach—he also started on about all the nature he saw on his last trip abroad. And how it was nicer than the nature that Janoo saw. Cheapster.

  ‘But didn’t you go to Bangkok then?’ asked Janoo, puzzled.

  ‘Haan, but there also you see the sky and breathe the air. Allah ki shaan is everywhere.’

  ‘But you know,’ said Mulloo, in her most tired-si voice. ‘We tau have travelled so much, so much, that every place has become bore. Ab dekho, last year Tony dragged me off to Venice. Itna suna tha, itna suna tha keh uss jaisi koi place hi nahin hai, and when we got there, guess what we found? It was all flooded. Couldn’t even step out of the hotel room without falling into a river. And that also all brown-brown, dirty water. Imagine! From there we went to Rome and it was all broken-broken. Worse even than Mohenjodaro. That Collerseum of theirs, taubah, so much work it needed doing. Worse than Fluffy’s face it was. Thanks God there were some nice shoe shops and bags vaghera in Rome, otherwise tau it would have been total waste. Also there was that
nice jewellery shop, Burglary, where I managed to spend a few hours. And then someone suggested we go and see, kya thee voh jagaa, Tony? Haan, Granada, to see that palace. Kya naam hai, bhai, us palace ka?’

  ‘Buckingham?’ I suggested.

  ‘Nahin, nahin.’

  ‘White House?’

  ‘Oho, nahin. It’s named after that shop in Main Market, baba. Kya hai voh? Alhamra! Haan. I knew it. Dekha? Alhamra Castle. I’m not saying it wasn’t nice. Of course all those Islamic buildings and everything are very pretty in their place, but really not so much different to the Lahore Fort, nahin? I mean, why go all that way if you’re just going to be greeted by the Fort at the end of it? And uff, so much of rush there. So many people keh koi hisaab hi nahin. I said to Tony, bhai, I tau I am not used to. Take me from here, baba, to my own sakoon-wali kothi in Gulberg. Honestly, East or West, Home is Best. Nahin, Tony?”

  ‘Bilkull,’ said Tony. ‘Home, and Patpong.’

  PTCL workers go on strike

  Butterfly dreams of a weekend farmhouse

  I’m so fed up, so tired, so sick to deaf of Janoo and his kanjoos makhi choos ways, na, keh poocho hi na. Only God knows how I’ve done guzara for all these years with a kanjooshra kameena like him. Honestly, koi aur hoti tau kub ki chhorh-chaarh keh chalee gayee hoti. What’s he done now? Aik tau you are also always in a comma.

  Bhai, it all started with a tiny-si request from me. You know how down to hearth I am, how I crave the saaf-suthri simple zindagi, deep in my hearts of hearts. So into fresh air I am, so much a lover of green lawns (and not just the Al-karam valon ki) and big-big trees and long-long driveaways and huge-huge farmhouses—no, no, I mean simple-se farmhouses. So I said to Janoo as we were driving back last weekend from one of our friends’ places in Bedian how nice it would be to have a chota-sa, cosy-sa farm there also, to which we could invite all our friends from Lahore and have open house and casual GTs with barbecues and born fires. Bas, I said only this much and he blew a phase.