Moni Mohsin - Duty Free

“I don’t see how this is a useless question. All I’m asking—”

Just then, thanks God, the food trolley came in. So I quickly heaped a plate with rice and chicken and koftas and put it in front of Kulchoo.

“Eat,” I said.

“I’m not hungry,” said Kulchoo.

“See what you’ve done?” I said to Janoo. “Taken away the child’s hunger and made me miss my TV drama.”

“It’s you who started it,” said Janoo. “Not just this conversation but the whole tuition nonsense. And all to keep up with the Joneses. I was against it right from the start.”

“Joneses? Have you gone cracked? I don’t know anyone called Joneses.”

“For God’s sake! It’s just a figure of spee—”

“You know what, guys?” shouted Kulchoo. “I’m out of here.” And he got up from the sofa and walked out slamming the door behind him.

“Kulchoo, eat something, baby,” I called after him.

“I’ll take something from the kitchen,” came his faraway reply.

“Happy now?” I said to Janoo.

He opened his mouth to say something but then he shut it and quietly left the room. I looked at the TV but even the credits of my serial had finished. I sat there with the untouched trolley till the food got cold. But still no one came back. Then the bearer came and said that Saab had asked for a plate of food to be sent to his study. I told him to take the trolley away.

I’m tau very glad that the Talibans are being given a good and proper beating-up by the army. They were giving us no ends of trouble. Blowing themselves up in full bazaars at the least evocation. You want to blow yourself up, go do it inside your own home or out in some quiet corner where you don’t endanger others, no? Honestly, so selfish they are. So unconsiderate. Then they were also stopping women in markets and bazaars and threating to throw acids in their faces if they wear jeans. Imagine! As if Pakistan belongs to them. And we are their slaves. Thanks God the army is showing them what’s what. If you ask me, it was overdue. I hope so now they will finish them off once and for all and not do a little bit of killing and then go quietly behind our backsides and make up with them again and as a make-up present give them another chunk of the country. “Here take Swat. And, here’s Kohat. Want Mardan also? Chalo , never mind, take that also.”

I know there’s that small problem of all the refugees who’ve fled from Waziristan to escape all that fighting-shighting and bombing-vombing. These days, by the ways, they are not called refugees but IDPs. That means Infernally Displaced Peoples. Sounds so much nicer than refugees, no? Almost as if it were a job title in a big company — like CFO, meaning Chief Federal Officer, or VP, meaning Vice President, although I always thought VP meant Visible Panties. Newspapers are saying there are a million IDPs in the refugee camps near Mardan. Really, the poors have so many children! Anyways, all the NGO- wallahs are making such a big hoo-haa that they are living in tents with no runny water and no toilets and no electricity and no schools and no doctors-shoctors and that something has to be done. I wanted to tell them that listen, I also live without electricity and no doctor-shoctor lives with me also but do I complain? But then I thought better not because then there will be another who-and-cry about how we rich don’t understand anything.

Some of the mothers in Kulchoo’s school have been sending the IDPs bus-fulls of bottled water and biscuits and dried milk and I asked what else they needed and they said that they needed clothes and medicine and the kids needed books. So being the soft-headed, charitable soul that I am, I packed up two enormous cardboard boxes for them and sent them along to Kulchoo’s school. Honestly, nothing like doing charity to make you feel close to God.

Inside the boxes I put fourteen Mills and Boon novels and eighteen Barbara Cartland novels that I last read in June (including my favourite, The Ruthless Rake ). I also put the last ten issues of Good Times , so the poor IDPs, they can also cheer up a little bit by looking at all the pictures of the best weddings and fab parties-sharties that we’ve been having here. Eight cartons of Lexxo (Lexotonil, my fave trankillizer) that I had left over. I think so they are slightly passed their expiry date, but I think so worst they will do is make the IDPs sleep longer. And if that refugee camp is as crowded as they say it is, it must be noisy also. So good to sleep longer, no? And then I sent them some old ties of Janoo’s. Some tau were even designer like Armani and all but they were a bit old-fashioned type so I thought chalo some Pathan pheasant who’s never worn Armani before will become so happy. I also sent some old chiffon saris of mine with matching petty-coats and blouses that are a bit on the tight side now.

Come to think of it, I don’t think so I’ve seen Pathan women from the tribal areas wearing saris. Come to think of it, I don’t think so I’ve ever seen a Pathan woman from the tribal areas. I don’t think so anyone in the outside world has either. They’re a bit like those rare animals in African forests that you can’t see unless you go and live there in the heat and the damp with the mosquitoes and the snakes and no toilets for months and months, very quietly and never showing yourself and maybe, just maybe, one day you catch a glimpse of one. But chalo , poor things they can wear their chiffon saris underneath their chaddars . Like Saudi princesses who wear Versace minis under their abayas .

Last night was the Butt — Khan wedding. So all yesterday I was on tender hooks. Because my sick-sense told me tonight at this wedding, we’d find a girl for Jonkers. After all, every single illegible girl of Lahore was going to be there — you don’t show up and everyone thinks you’re the only poor loser who wasn’t invited to the wedding of the year. So even if you don’t want to, you go. For face.

At least three thousand people were invited. Because between groom’s father, Talwar Khan, and bride’s father, Khayam Butt, they knew everyone in the city. At least everyone who was worth knowing and doing “hello — hi” with. So if a suitable girl wasn’t at this wedding then I don’t know where she’d be. And if Aunty Pussy couldn’t find a candidate there, then I’m sorry to say she might just have to design herself to her fate.

I wore my seven-standed emerald, pearl and diamond necklace that had belonged to Janoo’s grandmother with the matching earrings. Because I knew there’d be lots of BNM — Big New Money — there. That’s why I chose my “we-were-here-first” hairloom jewellery. After all you’ve got to show people that even though you may not arrive in a sport car, it doesn’t mean you are hungry-naked.

Of course, kill-joy Janoo didn’t come. He said it would be mega circus, heaving with boot-lickers and arse-holes, and that no one would notice if he didn’t show up. I told him that even if ten thousand people were invited, our hosts would know immediately that he hadn’t come, not because he’s special but because they keep taps on who-all came and who-all didn’t and they would remember and they would mind and tomorrow Kulchoo would be growing up and with grace of Allah be getting married and if Janoo didn’t bother to go to anyone’s weddings today nobody would come to Kulchoo’s wedding tomorrow and everybody would say, “ Haw , poor things, what a disaster their wedding was.” And he said that he didn’t care and I said fine, be like that and I was going and he said be my guest. I said, no ji , I’d be Khayam Butt and Talwar Khan’s guest. It’s not your wedding, okay? And then he said something back and then I said something back and then it became a proper fight with him shouting at me for being shallow and stupid and me shouting at him for being bore and a loser and now he’s gone off in a puff to Sharkpur. Good radiance!