The Diary of a Social Butterfly

by Moni Mohsin

  Anyways, when she brought them, I showed them to Janoo and said, ‘Look, I got these from Dubai on our last trip—from money I’d saved from household expanses. Nikki and her husband are going to come to our house for first time. We should give them something nice, na.’

  ‘Aren’t these a bit much, though?’ Janoo asked. ‘I was thinking of giving them just 20 thou each.’

  ‘Oh, no, no,’ I laughed. ‘What is 20 thou these days? Can’t even have a decent meal with that. If we are giving, we should give nicely, no? After all you ARE the head of the family…’

  Bush vows to rally world against Iran

  ‘Sleuth sayer’ warns Butterfly

  I was supposed to go to Karachi for Marry Add-a-Late ball for New Year. It happens every year, na. And I want to go every year but Janoo never wants to go, so I have no choice except to stay at home and eat Janoo’s head for not taking me and then dragging him around to at least fifteen parties in revenge.

  But this time Fluffy and Flopsy said, ‘We know how much you want to go to Karachi and we also know how going alone looks desperate in a woman of your age, so you come with us. You can sit at our table.’

  What do they mean, ‘woman of your age’? Flopsy may have been one year behind me at school but only because she failed three years. And each year she failed and was kept back, her age also got one year less. Had she stayed at the Convent and continued failing every year, she would have been the only sixteen-year-old in nursery. But her luck changed when she failed for the fourth time. Her father was posted to Pindi and she went off there to Presentation Convent pretending to be seven when she was actually ten.

  So first tau I wanted to tell Flopsy to go to hell, but then the thought of the ball made me swallow my pride. Ab dekho na, big things need big sacrifices. I mean, when Nehru offered Jinnah Pakistan without Kashmir, Jinnah also took, nahin? When I got home and asked Janoo, he said it was a splendid idea, the best suggestion he’d heard all year, and that I must go. In fact, he insisted I stay in Karachi for as long as I wanted.

  ‘You mustn’t rush back,’ he said. ‘Stay until Feb, March, if you like.’

  ‘Haw, but won’t you miss me?’ I asked him.

  ‘What? Miss you? Er, of course, of course. But we’ll manage, Kulchoo and I. It will be hard but somehow or the other we’ll find the strength to cope. Isn’t that right, K?’

  And Kulchoo, shweetoo, who was drinking a milkshake—I think so it was vanilla—nearly choked.

  So immediately I said, ‘No, no, I’ll stay if it makes you upset.’

  But Kulchoo, who was now cuffing and spluttering, shook his head a thousand times and the minute he got his voice back he said over and over again, ‘No, no, please, you mustn’t stay. Abba’s right. Go, stay for a month, two, three months.’

  Everything was ready. Table had been bought, air tickets booked, jora ironed, hair ironed, face ironed, no, no, I mean facial done—and then like a fool I decided at the last minute to go and consult Mummy’s sleuth sayer. Mummy has one she’s been going to in Model Town for years. She checks with her even before she goes to the bazaar. Her name is Baji Firdaus and she’s never, ever wrong. She once told Mummy to be aware of black. And that day, very same day, as Mummy was going to a big lunch at the Punjab Club with her hair all up in a big bee-hive, a crow swooped down and did big bathroom all over her lovely stiff bee-hive. Baji Firdaus even predicated Twin Towers. Imagine!

  So anyways, you know, na, that I’ve never been a very good flyer in planes, so despite of myself, I asked. And you know what she said? ‘What goes up must come down.’ Or something like that.

  Immediately I knew what she was talking about. So of course I didn’t go. Only a fool would travel after such a clear warning of a crash. Janoo was very puzzled and sorry also. Kept asking why I’d changed my mind up and tried to get me to think again. Even offered to go drop me himself in Karachi. Of course I didn’t tell him why I wasn’t going because he’d have laughed till he cried. He doesn’t believe, na. Because he’s a septic. But I kept saying, ‘Didn’t feel up to it.’ And Kulchoo, my little baby, tau looked actually so disappointed, so disappointed keh pooch hi na. So much he wanted his mother to have nice time. Dekho kitni meri care kartay hain, nahin?

  Danish newspaper publishes cartoons of Prophet Muhammad

  Butterfly does Eid

  Janoo and me always have this thug of war over Eid. He says we have to go and have Eid lunch with The Old Bag, and I insist that we should have it with Mummy and all. It’s always a tossed up and the casting vote goes to Kulchoo.

  ‘That’s not fair!’ I protest every year to Janoo, ‘you know how mercury Kulchoo is.’

  ‘Mercenary. The word’s “mercenary”. And I wonder where he gets it from?’

  ‘How I should know?’ I say with a shrug, as if I’m least bothered. ‘Kulchoo’ll opt for the place he gets the largest amount of Eidi and you know how The Ol… Ammi spoils him. Not like Mummy, who’s strick because she knows the value of a good brought up.’

  So it’s always lunch at The Old Bag’s and dinner, if we’re lucky, at Mummy’s. Kulchoo makes a fortune and I have to dish out to the Gruesome Twosome’s nasty kids and all The Old Bag’s servants and God knows who else. I tell you, Eid’s no fun if you’re at the giving end. I’d much rather just continue with Ramzan—sehri, namaaz, sleep, namaaz, sleep, namaaz, sleep and then iftaar. So simple, so holy, so unfussy, so inexpensive.

  Anyways, we arrived there and found the Gruesome Twosome and their tribe of baal bachas dressed in horrible durex joras. Or was it Lurex? Khair, whatever it was, it was very ugly and very last year. But you know me, na, always so polite, so dignified. So I didn’t comment. Just gave the Gruesome Twosome one long look from head to toe and then, with a small-sa smile, went and sat in a corner and started sending text messages to Mulloo, Mummy and all, saying Eid Mubarak to everyone. But taubah, majaal hai if they would leave me alone for one minute. Janoo’s family, that is.

  First maid comes with juice. ‘Please have,’ she says.

  ‘What juice is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Anaar,’ she said.

  ‘I hate anaar,’ I said, jabbing the keys on my phone.

  Then another maid comes with a plate of something greasy and shoves it under my nose. ‘Have samosas,’ she says.

  ‘I’m doing Atkins,’ I told her, pushing the disgusting plate away.

  Then the bachas come and stand in front of me. ‘Eid Mubarak, Maami,’ they said, looking pointedly at my bag. Greedy jaisay. Honestly! So I opened my bag, opened my wallet and gave them a 100 each. They looked at me with dismay. Janoo had given me 1000 rupees kay notes for children’s Eidi, but I kept those well hidden in the inside zipped-up department of my bag. They’re for other more deserving people, like Flopsy’s nieces, whose parents have a huge compartment in London ka Knightsbridge where I will inshallah go and spend whole of summers next summers.

  Then lunchtime came. Usual bore paindu food: aloo gosht, nargisi koftas, biryani, chicken qorma, chicken karahi, behari kebabs, shaami kebabs, seekh kebabs, pasandas, saag gosht, tawa fish, shabdeg, haleem, brain masala, keemay-waalay naan and siri payas, followed by shahi tukras, kheer, badaam ka halwa and some cake from somewhere. Ek tau The Old Bag’s cook also knows nothing. Na koi pizza, na koi pasta, na koi cold slaw, na koi trifle.

  Anyways, they kept insisting I eat, so I looked at the table and said, ‘But what is there?’

  Just then, thanks God my phone rang. It was Mummy. ‘Yes, Mummy,’ I said, sitting at the lunch table sandwiched between the Gruesome Twosome. ‘I’m coming. As soon as I’m done from here. They’re serving lunch so it won’t be long now, hopefully. Haan, and please wait lunch for me. There’s nothing here.’

  On the way home Janoo wouldn’t talk to me. He said I’d been rude and ungrateful. Dekho zara! I’m ungrateful? What about him, who never even thanked me for wasting half my afternoon on his precious rellies? Haan? Honestly, I tau have seen with my own eyes now. The more you do, the more taken f
or granted you get. Only good thing was, Kulchoo got given ten thou Eidi. Chalo, at least someone is happy.

  Manmohan offers peace treaty to Pakistan

  Aunty Pussy and Mummy at war

  Such a huge big phudda Mummy and Aunty Pussy have had. It was over Jonkers. At least I think so it was over Jonkers, but maybe it was about more. Maybe it was about them, the two of them. But outshot is that they aren’t speaking and I don’t think so they are ever going to speak. To each other, that is.

  It all started when Aunty Pussy complained to Mummy that I wasn’t maaroing enough hands and feet to help Jonkers find a new wife.

  ‘All she cares about are her coffee parties and her lunches and her hairdresser and her tailor,’ grumbled Aunty Pussy. ‘So selfish she is, never thinks about introducing my poor old son to anyone worthwhile.’

  ‘But only last week she took you to meet that girl,’ said Mummy.

  ‘Which girl?

  ‘Bhai, the teacher. You know, that girl with the teeth.’

  ‘Girl? You call that buck-toothed, grey-haired elderly person a girl?’ shrieked Aunty Pussy. ‘If those are the sorts of girls she is going to show Jonkers she might as well not bother. I mean, really!’

  ‘She wasn’t grey-haired,’ protested Mummy. ‘She had golden streaks.’

  ‘Everyone knows girls put in golden streaks when they want to hide the silver streaks.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ demanded Mummy. ‘My daughter has gold streaks.’

  ‘Exactly!’ said Aunty Pussy.

  ‘And what about your son, ji?’

  ‘My son doesn’t have streaks.’

  ‘Your son doesn’t have any hair to put streaks in.’

  ‘Are you saying Jonkers is losing his hair?’

  ‘Losing? Losing? Has lost. Is bald. Is loser. Has two failed marriages behind him and a huge belly in front of him. How do you expect my daughter to find him decent rishtas?’

  ‘Your daughter couldn’t find a decent rishta even if it slapped her in the face.’

  ‘Then why are you asking her, hain? Calling her thousand-thousand times a day and eating her head and drinking her blood.’

  ‘Because I want to give her empty, boring life some meaning.’

  ‘Empty? Boring? She has house, social life, money, servants, status, cars, jewellery. What more can anyone want? Oh, and she also has husband and child. I think so you are just jealous. You’ve always been jealous. Even in school you were jealous. I remember how you took out the eyes of my dolly that Daddy got from Bombay. Because I had dolly and you didn’t. You’ve always been like that—jealous, sarrhial, mean and nasty.’

  ‘Jealous of you? That’s a joke. Married to a nobody, a servant in someone else’s business. Doesn’t even have his own factory,’ sniffed Aunty Pussy.

  ‘It’s not an ordinary factory,’ shrieked Mummy. ‘It is a multinationalist with busy-busy factories in Jakarta and Africa and big-big offices in America and London. And he’s an officer, not a servant, an officer with a tie and briefcase. Which your thief-tax collector-embezzler husband couldn’t become even if he tried for a thousand years. And by the way, the tax collector’s rishta came first for me and only when I turned it down, because he was too poor and bore and ugly, did his mother come for you. Second-hand.’

  ‘Don’t make me open my mouth, ji,’ screamed Aunty Pussy. ‘As if your upright husband with his briefcase and his tie hasn’t been caught with the till in his paws, I mean, paws in the till. You’ve forgotten how he was almost thrown out by the big multinationalist company? Hain? And how his membership of Sindh Club was almost cancelled had it not been for my husband doing sifarish with the governor then, hain? Forgotten? Got almesia now, have you?’

  ‘You know, you’ve always been petty and mean and I don’t want to talk to you. Ever!’ shouted Mummy.

  ‘Same here!’ shouted Aunty Pussy.

  And they both slammed phones, and now I’m not looking for girl for Jonkers and Mummy’s told me to turn my back on him if I see him at any dinner-shinner (not that he’s ever invited to any), and to forget I ever had an aunt called Pussy.

  So I’m not looking for girl for Jonkers. Till at least tomorrow, when Mummy and Aunty Pussy will make out, sorry, make up, and then both of them will be on my case to find Jonkers a girl again. Chalo, at least I have one day off.

  57 dead in Karachi suicide bombing

  Butterfly plans Kulchoo’s wedding

  So much of fun these shaadis are, yaar. And thanks God the garmi is holding off a bit, which means keh I don’t have to go dressed as a Hindu widow in white malmal. In fact, one shouldn’t blow too hard on one’s own drum, but I tau have gone as Ashwariya Rai in green contract lenses and green satin sari with blue sequences. Everyone said I looked splitting copy of her, Mummy, Aunty Pussy, and, er—Mummy and even Aunty Pussy, who doesn’t do anyone’s praise for free. I had agreed to take Jonkers along to spot nice-nice girls for prospectus wives.

  Pehlay tau I went to Humair’s wedding, na. Oho, baba, to Maha Rehman. Shaheema and Tariq Rehman’s daughter, bhai. There was a qawwali at Shaheema’s. Very tasteful, very nice.

  Even Janoo, sarrhi boti, didn’t complain for once. In fact, he’s been singing Shaheema’s praises. ‘Instead of feeding the fat cats of Lahore, she’s given the money she would have spent on the wedding to the earthquake victims. She’s put her money where her mouth is.’

  I wanted to tell him if he’d put his money in my account I’d also put my mouth there, but then I thought maybe silent is golden. He’s in a good mood so rarely these days that there’s no need to take panga for nothing. So I put one pathar on my dil and a bigger one around my neck (the emerald that The Old Bag gave me at our mangni—first and last nice thing she ever gave me) and went off to Meher Sethi’s mehndi.

  What a spread, yaar! What intezaam, what decoration (I think so professionals did it), what khaana, what peena! So big-hearted, so splashy. Main tau bilkull swept up ho gayee.

  ‘Bas,’ I said to Janoo, ‘I tau will do a same-to-same mehndi for Kulchoo. No expense spared. You just wait and see, I will…’

  ‘No. We’ll do what Shaheema’s done. We’ll celebrate, of course, with a few close friends, but nothing lavish. We’ll give the money away instead.’

  Trust Janoo to pour water over all my plans. But I have also decided with myself that I’m not going to get into a you-you-me-me kind of phudda with him. Instead I will try to be all sweet si, understanding si, oopar-oopar se, but inside-inside I will do exactly what I want. Which is to have a HUUUUUGE wedding.

  ‘Haan, bilkull theek hai, darling. So clever you are, so sober, so bo… I mean, committed,’ I cooed. ‘We’ll have a quiet-si, choti-si wedding and we’ll send money for hundreds of degs at Data Sahib, but for the mehndi we’ll get J&S to do a Mittal-type function with Indian stars and elephants at a French chatto like Where Sigh, except that I’ll request Jalal to make one right here in Gulberg only, in the empty plot by Mummy’s house, and invite about a 1000 of my closest friends. That way, we’ll give to charity also and get into Good Times also with Wedding of the Year and all your sober se, sedate se, bore se friends will also say keh bhai, so much of responsibility they’ve shown by giving so much away. And who knows, maybe we can even get into TFT with an article about our philan-trophy and perhaps even a profile of you. Kaisa???’

  London bombs linked to Al Qaeda: UK

  Butterfly bites Cobra

  I’ve just come, na, from Billoo’s graduation in Boston. He went to some place called U-Mess. Did law-shaw or something like that. Billoo kaun hai? You may well ask. He’s Janoo’s nephew. Son of Janoo’s older sister, Cobra, whom I hate less than only one other person in the world—her sister, Psycho. So why did I go? To keep an eye on Janoo, in case voh over ho jaye aur thousands of dollars ka graduation present na day de.

  And just as well I went, because when Janoo gave me the lifafa to keep in my handbag that he was going to present to Billoo after his ceremony, I saw that it was bulging alarmi
ngly. So I said excuse me and pretended I needed to go and do small bathroom. I nipped around the corner and carefully opened the envelope to find ten hundred dollar ke notes all crisp-crisp inside. I tau fauran took out five notes and shoved them into my bra. Then I thought, Janoo shouldn’t get suspicious keh lifafa has become too thin. So I counted out five one-dollar ke notes and I slid them inside instead.

  Janoo may have forgotten, but I remember that we have a son called Kulchoo: and soon we’ll have to pay his college fees, and get him married, and build him an annexe to our house, and buy him his first car, and then his first house, and also pay for his servants, and his children’s school fees, and khaana-peena and petrol, vaghera. And God knows how expensive petrol will be then. And anyways, meray se poocho tau 500 is also too much for Billoo. But if I took out more than that Cobra might report. This way she will think maybe Janoo gave only five hundred and five dollars and stay chup.

  The risk was worth taking because as soon as bore graduation ceremony was over, I rushed to Maasi (sorry, sorry, Macy) in Boston and bought three pears of shoes—one silver, one gold and one silver-and-gold. Then I also got some MAC ki lipsticks and D&G ka sent and La Prarry ki face cream and Landcomb ka mascara, and it all came to so little that I felt sorry for myself and so shopped some more from Billoo’s graduation money. I told Janoo keh honestly, shopping tau is best in America, and they are so wanting you to have a nice day that you can’t possibly disappoint them, haina? Thanks God we didn’t have to stay with Cobra in Boston for more than three days.

  Vahan se we came straight to London, and uff, kuch na poocho, so much of garmi keh we tau thought we were going to pass out. Na koi AC na kuch. Honestly, so backward London is. Saw Da Vinci’s Coat. Such a bore film. It’s about some train or rail or something that’s holy. Fazool…