I’ve spent the last week in a food coma. Gone is my enthusiasm for intermittent fasting, banished is the disdain for eating after 6 pm, lost are my self-disciplinary dietary aspirations. I am all about the cake. Again. Because ‘tis the season, most nights this week there have been dinners and parties where I’ve been glued to the buffet like white on rice. Honestly, there was one dinner party with such good appetisers being passed around on trays that I decided to station myself at the swinging kitchen door for the whole night, just so I could intercept them first, like one does luggage at the airport carrousel.
One of the advantages of being an extension of the buffet table is that you get to have small, time-sensitive exchanges with everyone while they are filling up their plates, which saves the hassle of having to seek people out and ask them if they are happy with the decisions of their life.
In the first few parties I made a concerted effort to make conversation with people I didn’t know. One reason for this is that most Lahoris, myself included, tend to travel in packs and random people coming up and introducing themselves to you is seen as an aggressive, hostile declaration of war. But often when you are at a gathering during the holidays, there is bound to be one couple standing to the side while looking nervously around because they don’t know anyone. Often they’re probably just visiting, and I know from first-hand experience that being the lone outsider in a party where everyone seems to be a member of a synchronised air-kissing team can be intimidating at best and downright depressing at worst.
It is with this altruistic holiday spirit that I began talking to a couple I will call Ali and Alina, visiting from Dubai for the weekend. He’s a structural engineer and she works in finance, and both seemed a well-adjusted pair of intelligent people. We spoke about the vacuous cultural void of Dubai, about what it’s like to live away from home and about what they were planning to do on their vacation. It was very Downton Abbey tea-party-talk, and I felt proud of myself for being able to engage in polite conversation for once.
The three of us took a seat on a nearby sofa and then Ali went off somewhere. Alina and I kept chatting but I noticed she was getting distracted by a phone that kept buzzing on the sofa.
“Do you need to get that?”
“No,” she replied, “No, that’s Ali’s phone.” But she kept staring at it. She seemed to be wrestling with some decision in her mind because she fell silent for a while as I prattled on and on. Eventually I just stopped talking, both of us sitting ther – me looking at her looking at the phone. After a silence, she lunged at it and began flipping through the screen. Her expression hardened.
“Um, is everything alright?”
“What? Oh, yes. Yes! Everything is just – ” she said, flinging the phone back on the sofa, “ – peachy. What were we talking about?” Something was definitely up.
“I was asking how long you’ve been together?”
“Were you?” Alina nodded, her eyes slightly wide. “Mmmmm.”
Just then her husband rejoined us on the sofa.
“Sorry! Long line for the loo,” he said sitting down. “What did I miss?”
“Oh nothing,” Alina began sweetly, “Nothing at all! Fayes here was just asking how long we’d been together. I was going to tell him that we’d been together for 7 years but then I checked your phone and your mistress seems to really need to talk to you, so I got momentarily distracted. So yes, seven years. But probably not much more, right Ali?” Her voice was even, cold and hard. Ali looked like he’d been slapped across the face with a skillet.
“Oh hahahah!” I laughed, assuming this was some sort of inside joke. But no, their expressions remained unchanged until Alina got up from the sofa in dangerous slow-mo, and walked away wordlessly into the crowd. Ali looked from her to me and back again in a wild panic before chasing after her.
“It was nice meeting you!” I shouted out after them, mainly to bring closure to our conversation. But I mean, what do you do in those circumstances? So I did what any normal Lahori would do, and ran to the closest confidant in the room to spread the wildfire of gossip that the gods had seen fit to throw my way. By the end of the evening my sources had uncovered that the mistress lives in Lahore (#omg) and claims to be pregnant too (#OMG #menaretrash). I couldn’t confirm any of this since the couple locked themselves in a room and then swiftly left the party.
Suffice it to say that the evening taught me that no matter how bad you think your holidays have been, someone else is probably going through a worse time. And also that you should definitely talk to strangers during the party season, because the experience cane be both informative and terrifying.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com
One of the advantages of being an extension of the buffet table is that you get to have small, time-sensitive exchanges with everyone while they are filling up their plates, which saves the hassle of having to seek people out and ask them if they are happy with the decisions of their life.
I did what any normal Lahori would do, and ran to the closest confidant in the room to spread the wildfire of gossip that the gods had thrown my way
In the first few parties I made a concerted effort to make conversation with people I didn’t know. One reason for this is that most Lahoris, myself included, tend to travel in packs and random people coming up and introducing themselves to you is seen as an aggressive, hostile declaration of war. But often when you are at a gathering during the holidays, there is bound to be one couple standing to the side while looking nervously around because they don’t know anyone. Often they’re probably just visiting, and I know from first-hand experience that being the lone outsider in a party where everyone seems to be a member of a synchronised air-kissing team can be intimidating at best and downright depressing at worst.
It is with this altruistic holiday spirit that I began talking to a couple I will call Ali and Alina, visiting from Dubai for the weekend. He’s a structural engineer and she works in finance, and both seemed a well-adjusted pair of intelligent people. We spoke about the vacuous cultural void of Dubai, about what it’s like to live away from home and about what they were planning to do on their vacation. It was very Downton Abbey tea-party-talk, and I felt proud of myself for being able to engage in polite conversation for once.
The three of us took a seat on a nearby sofa and then Ali went off somewhere. Alina and I kept chatting but I noticed she was getting distracted by a phone that kept buzzing on the sofa.
“Do you need to get that?”
“No,” she replied, “No, that’s Ali’s phone.” But she kept staring at it. She seemed to be wrestling with some decision in her mind because she fell silent for a while as I prattled on and on. Eventually I just stopped talking, both of us sitting ther – me looking at her looking at the phone. After a silence, she lunged at it and began flipping through the screen. Her expression hardened.
“Um, is everything alright?”
“What? Oh, yes. Yes! Everything is just – ” she said, flinging the phone back on the sofa, “ – peachy. What were we talking about?” Something was definitely up.
“I was asking how long you’ve been together?”
“Were you?” Alina nodded, her eyes slightly wide. “Mmmmm.”
Just then her husband rejoined us on the sofa.
“Sorry! Long line for the loo,” he said sitting down. “What did I miss?”
“Oh nothing,” Alina began sweetly, “Nothing at all! Fayes here was just asking how long we’d been together. I was going to tell him that we’d been together for 7 years but then I checked your phone and your mistress seems to really need to talk to you, so I got momentarily distracted. So yes, seven years. But probably not much more, right Ali?” Her voice was even, cold and hard. Ali looked like he’d been slapped across the face with a skillet.
“Oh hahahah!” I laughed, assuming this was some sort of inside joke. But no, their expressions remained unchanged until Alina got up from the sofa in dangerous slow-mo, and walked away wordlessly into the crowd. Ali looked from her to me and back again in a wild panic before chasing after her.
“It was nice meeting you!” I shouted out after them, mainly to bring closure to our conversation. But I mean, what do you do in those circumstances? So I did what any normal Lahori would do, and ran to the closest confidant in the room to spread the wildfire of gossip that the gods had seen fit to throw my way. By the end of the evening my sources had uncovered that the mistress lives in Lahore (#omg) and claims to be pregnant too (#OMG #menaretrash). I couldn’t confirm any of this since the couple locked themselves in a room and then swiftly left the party.
Suffice it to say that the evening taught me that no matter how bad you think your holidays have been, someone else is probably going through a worse time. And also that you should definitely talk to strangers during the party season, because the experience cane be both informative and terrifying.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com