I just couldn’t belief it when Janoo asked me if I wanted to go to the Sindh Club Ball in Karachi. “Are you mad? I shrieked, “have you taken leaf of your senses? It’s the social event of the year and you’re asking me if I want to go?!”
Apparently, Janoo’s Oxbridge friends had invited us. I tau immediately booked our tickets Lahore-Karachi-Lahore (making sure PIA ka 777 aircraft ho – these days tau one has to say so many nuffles and give so much sadqa before boarding a PIA ka plane) and packed my Elan ki sari and off we went.
Ball was great, all the country’s who’s who was there. Only fly in the ornament was that we had to sit with Janoo’s bore Oxbridge friends, who spent all evening exchanging long, long, bore, bore stories about their olden days and Oxbridge dawns (apparently they call teachers ‘dawns’ in Oxford and Cambridge) and college porters (I think so they are coolie types who take students ka luggage up and down and also chowkidars) and getting the Blues (or was it booze) in cricket-shicket and rowing-showing. And then some loser, who was too poor to afford a car as a student even, started telling about how his cycle got stolen one night from outside his college. So then I also started on a long story about how our cook pretended that the cycle we’d given him to buy the sauda and all had gotten stolen while he’d been inside the butcher’s shop in the bazaar but when I threatened to call the police, he quickly said that maybe the butcher would know and he went and promptly got the cycle back.
“Servants are always at the bottoms of all household theft”, I told Janoo’s Oxbridge friend, “you should have threatened the porter that you’d turn him over to the SHO in the Cambridge thana for a nice chhittar beating”. At that, all of Janoo’s friends stopped talking and started staring at me. I suppose they weren’t expecting such a clever respond.
Apparently, Janoo’s Oxbridge friends had invited us. I tau immediately booked our tickets Lahore-Karachi-Lahore (making sure PIA ka 777 aircraft ho – these days tau one has to say so many nuffles and give so much sadqa before boarding a PIA ka plane) and packed my Elan ki sari and off we went.
Ball was great, all the country’s who’s who was there. Only fly in the ornament was that we had to sit with Janoo’s bore Oxbridge friends, who spent all evening exchanging long, long, bore, bore stories about their olden days and Oxbridge dawns (apparently they call teachers ‘dawns’ in Oxford and Cambridge) and college porters (I think so they are coolie types who take students ka luggage up and down and also chowkidars) and getting the Blues (or was it booze) in cricket-shicket and rowing-showing. And then some loser, who was too poor to afford a car as a student even, started telling about how his cycle got stolen one night from outside his college. So then I also started on a long story about how our cook pretended that the cycle we’d given him to buy the sauda and all had gotten stolen while he’d been inside the butcher’s shop in the bazaar but when I threatened to call the police, he quickly said that maybe the butcher would know and he went and promptly got the cycle back.
“Servants are always at the bottoms of all household theft”, I told Janoo’s Oxbridge friend, “you should have threatened the porter that you’d turn him over to the SHO in the Cambridge thana for a nice chhittar beating”. At that, all of Janoo’s friends stopped talking and started staring at me. I suppose they weren’t expecting such a clever respond.