Mummy called, hyper wentilating. ‘You haven’t changed your curtains, have you?’ she shrieked down the phone. ‘Haw Mummy,’ I said, ‘Chill karein. Go do yoga. Or Mild Fullness’. ‘Yoga shoga bhaarh main jaye. I’m asking if you’ve bought new curtains’. ‘Why’re you so hung over my curtains?’ ‘Because Pussy called just now only and told me that guvmunt is keeping taps on how much who who is spending. So they can catch people and ask kay bhai from where you got this money and if you can’t give answer then and there only they are setting NAB on you. She says she’s tau stopped buying chalghozas even.’
‘Don’t mind haan but I don’t belief that for one minute even. Aunty Pussy would rather have her skin ripped off than spend three thou on a kilo of chalghozas.’
‘It was my duty as your mother to warn you and I’ve warned you. Don’t come running to me if guvmunt throws you and your new curtains into jail!’ She slammed the phone. Uff! How paranoid can you get?!
But last night at our neighbours’ wedding – acchay bhalay khaatay peetay log – I note karoed that all their flowers were fakes! Just imagine! What hard ships people live with! I asked Sunny: what happened? She said becharas, they’re scared of being NABbed. Econmy is slowed down so much that guvmunt is crackling down on people who seem even little bit khaata peeta. Sunny’s husband Akbar is into real states ka business na and she said because of new laws guvmunt’s passed about buying and selling land, business is thhup. Total hiss of death. I said to her but Topsy is buying dharha dharh. She’s got four kothis in Defence now. But Sunny said that her father, mashallah, is a General, and that tau is different na. I said yes. Mashallah that’s different.
So when I went home and Kulchoo said it was so bloody freezing and why can’t we put on the heating, I shrieked at him: ‘You want to get us all NABbed? You think your father is General?’
