Duty Free (19 page)

“Why?” he asked.

“Haven’t you seen how much dengue fever there is?”

“But what’s that got to do with food or water? Dengue’s spread by mosquitoes.”

“Oh?” I said. “Is it? Well, don’t go near mosquitoes then. And, even if there are mosquitoes around don’t let them bite you, okay?”

“Take a chill pill, Mum. It’s hardly as if I go paddling in ditches of stagnant water.”

Take a chill pill! If he knew what I know about Aunty Pussy …

So yesterday I had the whole house sprayed from top to bottom with mosquito-killer spray. I also had lots of those green
coils burnt whose smell mosquitoes don’t like. And also in every room I had those tablets put inside the switches which make the buzzing sound that drives mosquitoes crazy. I also put a net around Kulchoo’s bed and I told all the servants that I would fire them if they opened Kulchoo’s windows one inch even.

When Kulchoo came home from school he said, “What’s that awful chemical smell everywhere?”

“Mosquito spray, and mosquito coils, and mosquito tablets,” I said.

“Jeez, Mum. You don’t have to go at them with WMDs. I don’t know about dengue fever, but by the time you’re through, I’ll be dead of chemical poisoning.”

“Don’t speak like that!” I said.

And then he went upstairs to his room and two seconds later I heard him shouting, “Who put these wussy net curtains around my bed?”

Honestly! He doesn’t even have this much of gratitude. It’s all Janoo’s fault of course, for teaching him to question me.

Talking of teachers, I’d gone to a dinner at Sunny’s. Janoo had come with me because I’ve told him I feel scared riding in a car by myself and also if I don’t go out and meet my friends and see the world I might go crack like Mulloo. Because I’ve had a trauma
na
, that’s why. I think so he believes me, poor thing, because now he comes quietly wherever I say. I think so I’ll keep it up for another five, six years at least.

Anyways, we were at this dinner. Not very big. Only about twenty people. As usuals men sitting on one side of the room
drinking whisky and discussing politics and women sitting on the other side of the room drinking Seven-Up and vodka and doing
gup-shup
. Dinner hadn’t been served yet because it was only a little bit after eleven o’clock. I felt like doing bathroom and also checking out Sunny’s new paintings that she’d bought behind my back from the NCA degree show. She’d told me she wasn’t going because “
Bhai
, who can be bothered to go all the way up the Mall with all the suicide bombs and those bore lawyers protesting every day just to see some silly paintings and besides, I’ve heard this time the show is not so good even.” So then when I’d said, “Okay then I won’t go also,” she’d quietly got into her car and gone. Double-crosser. Back-stabber. Hippo-crit.

So I got up from next to Faiza and went to the toilet. I came out of the toilet and was walking slowly towards the sitting room looking at the new paintings in the corridor—between you, me, and the four walls, they were quite mediocre because Sunny, poor thing she has no tastes,
na
—when suddenly I heard Zeenat’s voice. I quickly ran behind a pillar and hid. And then I heard Shaukat’s snarling laugh and then Sunny saying, “Come,
na
, please come into the sitting room. So how was the Chief Minister’s reception?”

I took my mobile phone out of my bag (Prada, what else?) and quickly dialled Mummy. She answered in a sleepy voice.
Aik tau
Mummy is also such a loser sometimes. Going to sleep at 11:20. Imagine!

“Mummy,” I said, “it’s me.”

“I know,” she mumbled.

“Okay,” I said.

“What do you want?”

“Has Aunty Pussy told Zeenat Jonkers’ decision yet?”

“Who? Jonkers’ what?”

“Oho, Mummy. Wake up!” And I repeated my question again.

“I don’t think so,” she yawned. “She was saying yesterday that she’s sure Jonkers will come round if we give him more time. Why? What’s happened?”

So I told her I was at this dinner and Zeenat was also here and that I needed to know in case Aunty Pussy had said anything. And what was I to do?

“Talk a lot but say nothing, darling. Just bury her under an … an … ava—, what’s that word meaning flood of snow, ava something—”

“Ava Gardner?”

“No, no, not Ava Gardner. Ava Gardner was an actress. Ava something else.”

“Avalasting?”

“No silly, it’s ava—”

“Mummy I don’t want to play this bore word game. Say what you want or otherwise shut up the phone.”

“Just give her so many compliments that she can’t get one word in about Jonkers or anything else.”
Aik tau
Mummy is also such a clever one,
na
. No wonder Janoo calls her Kernel Klebb. I think so she was a famous spy from a James Bond movie. The Kernel, not Mummy.

When I returned to the sitting room, Zeenat immediately patted the seat next to her on the sofa.

“How lovely to see you here,” she said, kissing me on the cheek. “Did I tell you how much we all enjoyed meeting you that evening? We must do dinner again soon.”

“
Hai
, what a fab
jora
you’re wearing, Zeenat Apa,” I said, sitting down next to her. “Let me guess. Bunto? Faiza Sammee? Or maybe from India? Sabyasachi? Varun Bahl?”

She looked down at the burnt orange crepe outfit she was wearing as though she’d forgotten what she’d put on. I hate when people pretend like that.

“Oh
this
one,” she said. “I’ve had it for so long that I forget where it came from. Tell me, how’s that charming cousin of yours? I thought he was such a fine young man. So gentlemanly, so courteous and—”

“And your earrings,” I butted in. “They are looking like real hairlooms to me. No, Faiza? Don’t Zeenat Apa’s earrings look like
pukka
hairlooms? Look
yaar
, what fat pearls. Basra, I’m thinking. Agricultured ones
tau
don’t have this shine at all, no?”

And Faiza also reached over to look and did lots of oohs and aahs and boasted about her own mother’s earrings that were also of Basra pearls that she gave to her daughter-in-law who then left her husband (Faiza’s brother) but took the pearls and now how their hearts smoke with anger whenever they see her going about town wearing those earrings. Another five minutes passed. I wished that Sunny would serve dinner, so we could snake out quietly. I tried to catch Janoo’s eyes across the room in the men’s side, but he was deep inside a discussion with Akbar.
Aik tau
Janoo is also such a hippo-crit
na
.
When you beg and beg him to come with you to a dinner, he won’t and when you drag him out and then you want to leave, he won’t. Honestly.

“Just the other day Tanya was saying to me how much she’d like to meet you again,” said Zeenat, touching my arm.

“
Haw
look at her, what a liar!” I thought to myself. And then I said: “Faiza, have you seen Zeenat Apa’s house? So much art she has, that don’t even ask. And all modern, modern, trendy, trendy.”

So then Faiza, who is a shameless show-offer, talked for ten full minutes about her own art collection and how all of Lahore’s top artists do so much respect of her and how they are always saying that no one knows about art like she does and Zeenat kept trying to cut her off but once Faiza starts only Al Qaeda can stop her. So in that time I again tried to make signals at Janoo. But would he look at me for one second even?

When Faiza finally stopped, Zeenat turned to me and said, “Shall you, me, and Tanya have lunch some time next week? And maybe you could ask your cousin to join us too?”

Haw
, doesn’t she have any work to do? Who runs her schools,
haan
, if she’s out lunching all the time? What a fraud. And between you, me, and the four walls, I’d rather have lunch with Mullah Omar than that rude daughter of hers.

“
Hai
, I’d love to,” I said, “but you know next week I think so I’m going to Sharkpur with my husband. It’s our village,
na
. Spending one week every month there is
tau
total must for me. We run a school there, my pet project. But it’s small and
for poors only. Charity. Not big business complexed like yours, of course.”

“How admirable. When are you back from your village?”

“I don’t know yet. Maybe this time we’ll stay for whole month.”

Thanks God then Sunny finally announced dinner and before Zeenat could say anything else to me I escaped into the dining room. I got there first and everyone must have thought I was such a greedy but I damn cared. I managed to escape her during dinner also. Every time she came near me, I quickly made an excuse and went to the other side. Thanks God it was standing-up and not sitting-down dinner or otherwise I would have been trapped next to her. Once I said, “Oh, look at that salad. Beatroots are my best vegetable. Must have
na.
” And then, “You know something, I’m
tau
just dying for water. No no, I’ll get it myself. I always do all my own works.” And third time I even went into the bathroom and stayed there for five full minutes but then I thought what if people outside think I’ve got cholera or something because this is second time I’ve been and so I quickly came out and thanks God by that time desert was being served and like it always happens, as soon as everyone had put their desert spoons down, they said
Allah Hafiz
and thank you very much and everyone left altogether.

On the way home Janoo said to me, “I understand you’re coming to Sharkpur with me next week. To check up on
your
pet project.”

“If you heard it from Zeenat, just ignore. You know, what
she said to me? That Tanya was dying to meet me again. Look at her! She’s such a liar, that one.”

“She’s not alone,” said Janoo in a tired-type voice. I looked sideways at him but he was looking straight down the road. What did he mean?

I called up Jonkers and I said to him, “Listen, Jonkers. You’ve got to tell your mother to tell Zeenat Kuraishi that you don’t want to marry her daughter.” And then I told him what had happened to me last night. He listened quietly and then he said, “I’m sorry you had to go through that. I’ll make sure she calls Zeenat and tells her.”

Then he said he wanted to talk to me and that he’d called a few times but that I’d always been busy. He said that in fact he had to ask me a favour but that I mustn’t tell anyone. Whenever someone tells me I mustn’t tell something to anyone, immediately my ears start tinkling with excitement because I know, I just know, I’m going to hear some delish,
garam masala
gossip. And also I immediately start thinking, now who can I tell it to?

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
.