I want to take this opportunity to publicly thank whoever came up with the name Hurricane Nilofer. You’re a star. Aside from the fact that most every Nilofer I’ve met in my life has deserved the title or nickname ‘Hurricane’, it’s the first storm in our region that I can remember actually having a name. I guess this is an evolution of our routine borrowing of American naming precedents (‘Memogate’ still reeks of plagiarism) and it was only a matter of time before we too began attaching regular names to irregular storm patterns.
For all the excitement at its impending arrival, Nilofer H (as I’m sure the storm would have been called if it appeared in Sunday Magazine; imagine dark, sultry cloud doing awkward side-pose with Berkin bag) turned out to be quite a flop. Karachi dwellers were so excited by their darkened skies that I thought they’d declare a national holiday. Bless them, for they see rain seldom. Lahoris by comparison are so unfazed by stormy weather that it took us two days to notice the last time we had a deluge.
Sadly, Nilofer H had better things to do than rain down on our coastal city, and instead sent a dust storm swaddled in her regret. Bummer. Small mercies, though, because as a city Karachi is about as good at dealing with vast amounts of rain as a fat person is with the prospect of public nudity.
Rain has been on my mind, too. My former astrologer — a woman I followed online for a decade before she began giving me updates about her intenstinal health — had already divined that because Neptune recently entered my domestic chart, I would be at an increased risk of water damage for the next decade and a half. That just sucks. And it’s so true. Ever since Neptune crashed into me, I’ve had floods, leaks, collapses, mold infestations, termites, water damage, warping, and pretty much every other plague associated with a damp house that you can imagine (and some you can’t.)
When I walked into my kitchen the other day, my cook was standing there with a piece of the sink tap in his hands, its ends rusted and broken, as an arc of water sprung from the wall onto the floor like a peeing cupid’s watery arrow.
“The sink broke,” he told me matter-of-factly, holding up the mangled pipe.
“Of course it did,” I replied, trying desperately to drink some coffee before more bad news came my way. He’s used to this. We’ve developed a routine of sorts, my cook and I. I’ll wake up and make coffee while he gives me the lowdown on all the stuff that isn’t working in the house, which is usually everything. I didn’t say it was a good system. “I’ll just call the…thingy…the… huh,” I petered off, distracted by the sheer horror of the space which I had trained myself to ignore. Every single cabinet had been eaten by termites, the walls were peeling in extravangant patches so that there was more concrete than actual paint, and it had only one working drawer out of 15. My poor cook has been dealing with it as best he can, cooking on the one working flame and producing three dishes a day, but when I saw him surrounded by what looked like a bomb shelter doused in water, my heart just broke.
My architect friend has been dropping by my place for some quiet time recently. She reads as I work and it’s all very A Room of One’s Own. She’s been offering to help with the kitchen for ages and immediately drew up an elegant plan; she had a contractor there in an hour and by the next day I was taken to see some kitchen appliances (my stove hasn’t worked since 2012, which isn’t much of a problem since the house hasn’t received gas since 2010). I’m not used to the professional swiftness of architects who are directly overseeing a site. I don’t think anyone can be. By day three, I woke up to find seven men with sledgehammers surrounded by the derbis of what was once my Kitchen of Doom and within another 12 hours the whole space was empty and ready for refurbishment.
I love cooking, I always have, and I’m told my food isn’t vomit-inducing. Still, the only thing I’ve ever wanted was to make a kitchen that has nothing to do with food. I mean I’ve always wanted a giant exhaust pipe that comes directly out of the celling and looks like modern art. I don’t know exactly why I want this so badly, but I think it has to do with early exposure to those BBC Food shows from the 2000s. Broke as I am from my summer travels, it’s the only thing I could splurge on, and so strangely I’ve ended up with a regular kitchen accented with a ridiculously ostentatious silver dildo sticking out over the stove. I don’t care, it’ll look amazing.
Like every other aspect of building, Pakistan has traveled light years since the 90s in terms of what you can buy here. I was shown dozens of different styles of tiles and cabinets and sinks and stoves and more (how, I ask you, unless it is also a time machine, can anyone charge RS 50,000 for microwave?). The salesman was a clever little thing, and I found I had mistakenly spent four times my budget after just half an hour with him because he convinced me I wanted, nay, needed, to have white cabinetry that is lacquered from the sap of a plant in Japan that flowers once every 50 years under the full moon of the Goddess. It was only after I saw the price that I thought Japanese Sap probably wasn’t as important as the ability to buy food.
My kitchen, sadly, won’t be ready for another few weeks because of supply chains (FYI: always build from scratch, renovations are the most appalling things and exist solely to make contractors buckets-full of money) and so I’ll be sitting here unable to cook/drink/eat for about 18 days. My cook has set up shop in the garage, and is actually quite delighted at having an outdoor place to chop and fry stuff because he says it reminds him of cooking shows on TV, which I appreciate if only because it reminds me of MasterChef: Cantonment Edition.
Please send food care packages to thekantawala@gmail.com or @fkantawala.com on twitter
For all the excitement at its impending arrival, Nilofer H (as I’m sure the storm would have been called if it appeared in Sunday Magazine; imagine dark, sultry cloud doing awkward side-pose with Berkin bag) turned out to be quite a flop. Karachi dwellers were so excited by their darkened skies that I thought they’d declare a national holiday. Bless them, for they see rain seldom. Lahoris by comparison are so unfazed by stormy weather that it took us two days to notice the last time we had a deluge.
Sadly, Nilofer H had better things to do than rain down on our coastal city, and instead sent a dust storm swaddled in her regret. Bummer. Small mercies, though, because as a city Karachi is about as good at dealing with vast amounts of rain as a fat person is with the prospect of public nudity.
Most every Nilofer I've met in my life has deserved the title or nickname 'Hurricane'
Rain has been on my mind, too. My former astrologer — a woman I followed online for a decade before she began giving me updates about her intenstinal health — had already divined that because Neptune recently entered my domestic chart, I would be at an increased risk of water damage for the next decade and a half. That just sucks. And it’s so true. Ever since Neptune crashed into me, I’ve had floods, leaks, collapses, mold infestations, termites, water damage, warping, and pretty much every other plague associated with a damp house that you can imagine (and some you can’t.)
When I walked into my kitchen the other day, my cook was standing there with a piece of the sink tap in his hands, its ends rusted and broken, as an arc of water sprung from the wall onto the floor like a peeing cupid’s watery arrow.
“The sink broke,” he told me matter-of-factly, holding up the mangled pipe.
“Of course it did,” I replied, trying desperately to drink some coffee before more bad news came my way. He’s used to this. We’ve developed a routine of sorts, my cook and I. I’ll wake up and make coffee while he gives me the lowdown on all the stuff that isn’t working in the house, which is usually everything. I didn’t say it was a good system. “I’ll just call the…thingy…the… huh,” I petered off, distracted by the sheer horror of the space which I had trained myself to ignore. Every single cabinet had been eaten by termites, the walls were peeling in extravangant patches so that there was more concrete than actual paint, and it had only one working drawer out of 15. My poor cook has been dealing with it as best he can, cooking on the one working flame and producing three dishes a day, but when I saw him surrounded by what looked like a bomb shelter doused in water, my heart just broke.
My architect friend has been dropping by my place for some quiet time recently. She reads as I work and it’s all very A Room of One’s Own. She’s been offering to help with the kitchen for ages and immediately drew up an elegant plan; she had a contractor there in an hour and by the next day I was taken to see some kitchen appliances (my stove hasn’t worked since 2012, which isn’t much of a problem since the house hasn’t received gas since 2010). I’m not used to the professional swiftness of architects who are directly overseeing a site. I don’t think anyone can be. By day three, I woke up to find seven men with sledgehammers surrounded by the derbis of what was once my Kitchen of Doom and within another 12 hours the whole space was empty and ready for refurbishment.
I love cooking, I always have, and I’m told my food isn’t vomit-inducing. Still, the only thing I’ve ever wanted was to make a kitchen that has nothing to do with food. I mean I’ve always wanted a giant exhaust pipe that comes directly out of the celling and looks like modern art. I don’t know exactly why I want this so badly, but I think it has to do with early exposure to those BBC Food shows from the 2000s. Broke as I am from my summer travels, it’s the only thing I could splurge on, and so strangely I’ve ended up with a regular kitchen accented with a ridiculously ostentatious silver dildo sticking out over the stove. I don’t care, it’ll look amazing.
Like every other aspect of building, Pakistan has traveled light years since the 90s in terms of what you can buy here. I was shown dozens of different styles of tiles and cabinets and sinks and stoves and more (how, I ask you, unless it is also a time machine, can anyone charge RS 50,000 for microwave?). The salesman was a clever little thing, and I found I had mistakenly spent four times my budget after just half an hour with him because he convinced me I wanted, nay, needed, to have white cabinetry that is lacquered from the sap of a plant in Japan that flowers once every 50 years under the full moon of the Goddess. It was only after I saw the price that I thought Japanese Sap probably wasn’t as important as the ability to buy food.
My kitchen, sadly, won’t be ready for another few weeks because of supply chains (FYI: always build from scratch, renovations are the most appalling things and exist solely to make contractors buckets-full of money) and so I’ll be sitting here unable to cook/drink/eat for about 18 days. My cook has set up shop in the garage, and is actually quite delighted at having an outdoor place to chop and fry stuff because he says it reminds him of cooking shows on TV, which I appreciate if only because it reminds me of MasterChef: Cantonment Edition.
Please send food care packages to thekantawala@gmail.com or @fkantawala.com on twitter