Moni Mohsin - Duty Free

So I said cross my heart and swear on the Holy Koran and please tell na and he said did I remember the girl we saw at Shabnam Butt’s daughter’s wedding? We saw no girl, I told him. We did, he said. She was dressed up in yellow shalwar kameez and she stopped his mother from falling. He’d been trying to tell me for the longest time. Her name, he said, is Sana and he’d followed her that night and made enquiries about her and discovered that she was an old school friend of Shabnam Butt’s daughter from the time that they were at the Convent of the Holy Family. Shabnam and all were not so rich then and didn’t send their daughter to Lahore Grammar like all the old-rich of Gulberg and Cantt do now. In my time, we — the rich, old-family-types — used to go to Convent of Jesus and Mary. Only middle-type people used to go to Holy Family. That’s why their daughter must have been together with this Sana person. Anyways, he said he had to go now but could he take me out to lunch soon because he wanted to tell me something and also remember, I mustn’t tell anyone as yet. What bore gossip. Not even worth passing it on to anyone else. Typical Jonkers.

In the afternoon Mulloo came to see me. I was in my bedroom getting a padicure when she burst in looking like an unmade bed. Her hair was all messy, messy, her clothes all crumbled, her eyes swollen and she smelled like old laundry.

“ Haw , Mulloo,” I said, “what’s happened, yaar ?”

“Send her away first,” she said raising her chin at my padicure -waali . Honestly, it was a bit much of her asking me to get rid off the padicurist when Mulloo knows that she charges five hundred an hour and that I had nail polish on one foot and not on the other. I wanted to say to her wait five minutes, let her paint my other foot also but then I saw Mulloo’s trembling chin and her beatroot face and I thought no, better do as she says or else she will make a scene. So I gave a big sigh and paid the padicurist and she left grinning like Tony Blair. User. See if I ever call her again.

As soon as she was gone Mulloo threw herself on the sofa and started wailing like a ghost from the graveyard.

“I’m ruined,” she sobbed, “finished.”

“Has something happened to Tony?” The bank manager must have taken him off to jail, I thought. Or maybe he’s having an affair. Tony, not the bank manager. Maybe he’s also put a girl from the Diamond Market in a little house in Defence and has been feeding her with Mulloo’s earnings from her biryanis and kormas . Or maybe he’s done another ghupla and he’s been caught with his hands inside the cash safe. You never know with men, na .

“It’s Irum,” she cried. “She’s gone and fallen in love with a DVD- wallah and she says if I don’t agree to a marriage she will run away with him. With a DVD -walla-a-a-h ! What have I done to deserve a DVD -wallah with a shop in Defence? Haan? I’ve kept my fasts, said my prayers, done my charity, even gone on Umra twice and this is how Allah repays me. With a DVD -wallah ! He gives everyone else banker sons-in-law and feudals with thousands of acres and IT millionaires with green cards and I get a DVD -wallah !”

She picked up one of my hundred-dollar silk cushions that I got from Singapore last summers and pressed her face into it. I thought of her fat tears and her greasy hair and her running nose and I considered for a minute offering her a local cotton cushion instead but then I thought she might tear up my cushion, the mood she was in.

Otherwise I didn’t know what to say. If I said I knew from before only about the DVD -wallah , then she would say why didn’t I tell and she would accuse me of laughing behind her back. And if I pretended I didn’t know and she found out later that I did, then?

So all I said was, “ Haw , look at Irum,” while looking at my one unpainted foot. And then to make her feel better I said, “But you know, Mulloo, ever since all these bombs-shombs have been bursting all over the place, people have stopped going so much to cinemas. Instead everyone’s staying at home with DVDs to watch on their own private home cinemas. The DVD shop -wallahs must be making so much money. Who knows, this man might be a DVD millionaire even? Haan? ”

“Don’t be stupid. There’s no such thing as a DVD millionaire.”

“You never know yaar— ”

Suddenly she grabbed my knee. “You’ve got to save me!”

“ Haw , Mulloo—”

“Please have a proposal sent for Irum. Only you can do it.”

“But from who? ” I was tau non-pulsed.

“From your cousin.”

“Which cousin?”

“Jonkers.”

“Jonkers?” I screeched. “Mulloo, he’s thirty-seven. Irum’s sixteen . And … and he’s bald and he’s sober-type and he’s die-vorced. And he’s not even that rich, you know.”

“But at least he’s not a DVD- wallah . And he’s foreign-returned and he is comfortable and he has his own business—”

“So does the DVD- wallah .”

“We know your aunt and uncle also.”

“You can also get to know DVD’s mummy and daddy.”

“So you want me to marry off my Irum to a DVD -wallah ?” she asked coldly, flinging my Singapore cushion on to the floor.

“I’m only saying that just because you know someone’s mother and father or because they are foreign-returned you can’t marry your child off to them.” I picked up my cushion and put it back on the sofa out of Mulloo’s reach.

“And what,” she said, raising her eyebrows at me, “did you look at when you went searching for a wife for your cousin? Haan? Just that you knew the girls’ parents or, even worst, knew someone who knew their parents? Just that, na ? You even went to look at Tanya Kuraishi. I know all about that so don’t try and deny, ji . And also you went to see a girl who’s in love with someone else. And by the way, both of them are in their early twenties so don’t give me lectures about age difference.”

“Is Tasbeeh in love with someone else? Haw , Mulloo, what a traitor you are! Imagine sending us to do a proposal and not even telling us this much.”

“So are you going to ask your aunt or not?”

“Who’s she in love with?”

“The DVD -wallah !”

“Even Tasbeeh?”

“No stupid. Irum! What do I care about Tasbeeh?”

I looked at Mulloo properly. Her eyes were crazy and her breaths were coming so fast that she looked like she’d just finished a ten-mile run. I knew then that she was not in her proper mind. So instead of arguing with her I began asking her how she’d found out about the DVD -wallah and Irum. And she said that she first became suspicious when Irum’s phone bills became more than their electricity bills. And then she started listening at doors and things and before the week had finished she’d found out.

So then I gave her some tea and when she’d drunk two full cups and calmed down a bit, I said to her that Irum won’t marry anyone else as long as she was in love with her DVD- wallah . Mulloo asked what she should do and I told her if you don’t mind I’ll send for my Mummy. She knows answers to everything like this. Mulloo agreed to let me call her but only on one condition: that she has to swear on my head that she won’t tell anyone, not a single person. I wanted to tell her that she can’t attach strings like that to Mummy. But I said, don’t worry, my Mummy is tight as your fist.

So while Mulloo sat, I sent the driver for Mummy and she came and she also had two cups of tea while she listened to Mulloo’s story with narrow eyes and then she said best thing was not to get Irum married to another man but to get her to fall out of love with this one. And best way to do that was to invite him to their house all the time and start calling him beta dear and doing twenty-four-hour flattery of him which will make him very pleased with himself and Irum very irritated with him. And then she said, Mulloo and Tony should even start criticizing Irum in front of him. Saying things like, “ Beta , please explain to Irum not to speak so much on her mobile phone. Of course , we don’t mind her talking to you. Of course you are like our own son, but all these friends of hers, really is it necessary to waste so many hours on the phone with them?”