Duty Free (4 page)

We were all quiet after that. I think so we were all imagining what the sex appeals must have been like. I didn’t say, but I must say I was a bit shocked that Aunty Pussy and Mummy should be thinking such dirty thoughts. At their age. When they should be thinking of God and graves. Just look at them!

Mummy suggested that Aunty Pussy should make a shopping list of all the most illegible girls of Lahore and then do some window-shopping before making a shortlist and final purchase.

“If we have to go to each and every one’s house, Mummy, and see them one by one that will take till Doomday,” I said. “Remember Jonkers has to be married by New Year. Better is to go somewhere we can see five, six together. In bunches.”

“We could go and park outside Kinnaird College and have a good look at forty, fifty of them as they come out from the college gates,” said Aunty Pussy.

I said no. One, because after the threats from the beardoweirdos there is so much of barb-wire and security check posts outside Kinnaird that you can’t get to the gates and two, I remember from my time at Kinnaird how much fun we used to make of mothers who did like that. Desperate Aunties, we called them.

And Mummy said that if we did that we could also find ourselves parking up the wrong tree. Nowdays lot of girls were coming to Kinnaird whose fathers were shopkeepers from Brandeth Road selling toilets and taps and that Kinnaird was not like the Kinnaird of olden times when I was there and when only girls from good baggrounds came.

I told Mummy my time was not olden times,
ji. Hers
was.

“What about a wedding?” said Aunty Pussy. “Can’t we go
to a wedding where we can see nice stacks of them together? There must be some big wedding coming?”

And then I remembered the card that I’d got from Shabnam Butt, wife of Retired General Khayam Butt, who has become Lahore’s biggest, richest property developer. Their girl is marrying Talwar Khan’s boy.

“Which Talwar Khan?” asked Mummy.

“Oh Malika, what’s happened to you?” said Aunty Pussy. “Talwar Khan the politician,
bhai
. Who was on Musharraf’s cabinet and also was on Nawaz Shareef’s before and is now the PM’s right-hand man.”

“Lots of good girls will come to that wedding,” said Mummy.

“All of Lahore will be there,” said Aunty Pussy happily.

“All except Janoo. He’s already told me flat that he’s not going,” I said. “He says he doesn’t like corrupt, crooked types like that. Anyways, you know how bore he is. Big, big weddings are not his scene. So you two can come with me. I think so, you should bring Jonkers, so he can also see.”

But the wedding was still many days away and Aunty Pussy said she couldn’t let even a day pass doing nothing for her poor, sad Jonky and so I must arrange some viewing in between. I said I’d see. But inside I wanted to tell her to arrange it herself for her poor sad Jonky if she was in so much of a hurry. I’m not some, God forbid, Madam from Diamond Market who can produce ten, ten girls at the slick of a finger. But I didn’t say because Aunty Pussy is a bit touchy-type, you know, and I didn’t want anything else to happen to my Kulchoo.

Yesterday was my kitty day. Kitty, by the way, is
not
a cat. Kitty is socialist way of saving money. We have a group of ten friends, very reclusive and all because we don’t just invite anyone to join our kitty, you know. They all have to be nice, rich girls from good baggrounds like ourselves. So we get together every month at one member’s house for lunch and each of us contributes ten thousand rupees to the kitty and every month we take turns for one person to take whole lot. And it goes on like this for ten months until everyone’s taken a
lakh
of rupees and then we start all over again.

Janoo says he doesn’t see the point, because if I was to stuff ten thousand into a piggy bank for ten months I’d still have a hundred thousand at the end. Why to go through all the rig-my-roll of taking turns and keeping count and meeting for lunch and things? I told him that he was a hippo-crit because he was all praise for my maid Jameela who, when she was saving to buy a TV, put money into a committee. (The poors call kittys committees,
na
, which they pronounce “cummaytee” in typical illitred non-English-speaking,
desi
way.) Janoo said that was because Jameela didn’t have a bank account nor any investment chances like all the rich
begums
in my
group. Nor could she put the money in a jar at home because her no-good brothers would help themselves to her savings. What was a smart move for Jameela was a bloody stuppid waste of time for me. And instead of doing time-waste at kitty parties, I should be helping Jameela open a bank account or something useful like teaching English to the girls in his charity school in Sharkpur. I told him flat I’d rather die than go to shitty Sharkpur with its dirty cow smells and its filthy fields and in any case our kitty wasn’t about money. We were least bothered about money. It was just a chance to meet up and do
gup-shup
but I couldn’t expect an antisocialist like Janoo to understand importance of chit-chat in a thousand years.

Anyways, the kitty lunch was at Baby’s house this time. So me and Mulloo and Maha and Faiza and Sunny and the others, we all got there and sat around doing
gup-shup
from here and there and waiting for Nina when Baby’s bearer came in with a note that had been delivered by Nina’s driver saying that to please return her eighty thou right now, ten thou for every month that she’d contributed without getting anything in return so far, because she was no longer part of our group and that she’d joined Natasha’s kitty instead. And to please send the money right now with the driver. Natasha’s husband’s just landed a fat guvmunt contract
na
to rebuild schools in the Frontier that the Talibans burnt and we all know what
that
means and besides, and even more importantly, in Natasha’s kitty group is also the Army Chief’s best friend’s wife’s sister.

Look at Nina. What a money-minded, snake-in-the-grass, back-stabber. And asking for her money back. What cheeks.
So all the girls got angry and said that why should they give and if Nina wanted her money back she should come back and do the two months remaining properly and wait her turn like everyone else. So they sent her a text saying all that and she texted back saying that she will tell to the Army Chief’s best friend’s wife’s sister and when that happens we shouldn’t say that she hadn’t said.

So then everyone got after Mulloo and said if anyone should give the money back it should be Mulloo because she introduced Nina to the group. And Mulloo started shouting that why should she and while all of this was going on, Baby took me aside and asked if my aunt was still looking for a girl and I said maybe and she said her niece, Tanya, was foreign-returned and very nice and all and that her sister Zeenat was looking for nice foreign-returned boy and that don’t worry money wasn’t a consideration and that I should tell to my aunt and let her, Baby, know the next day.

“Zeenat Kuraishi?” shrieked Aunty Pussy down the phone. “Zeenat Kuraishi of New Dawn School Syndicate? But she’s worth
crores
and
crores
. She has schools in every city. At least forty thousand children go to her schools. She makes more than all those sugar mill
-wallahs
and those steel factory owners. The girl will inherit so much, so much that Jonkers won’t need to lift a finger ever again.” And then she started asking me about the girl.

I told her I hadn’t even slapped eyes on her. All I knew was that she was foreign-educated and that her parents were not after money and that Zeenat had asked us for dinner the next night and that we mustn’t say anything to the girl because she would hit the ceiling if she knew we were there to check her out. These foreign-educated types are a bit funny that way,
na
. They want everything in life to be their own choice. Aunty Pussy said she always knew her Jonkers would make a match made in heaven and that this was God’s way of making up to them for that two-
paisa
piece, Miss Shumaila. And hanging me up, she rushed off to tell Jonkers and to get her hair died and set for tomorrow.

But Mummy was a little bit more precautious.

“Zeenat got married at least fifteen years after me,” she said. “So her daughter must be in her early to mid twenties. The girl is rich, young, and foreign-educated. Why would she want to have an arranged marriage with an older man who’s been married before, isn’t half as rich as her and let’s face it, darling, is no Carry Grant either?”

“That’s what I’m wondering also. But Mummy, just think, if the marriage does happen, how fantastic the wedding will be and how expensive the presents from the girl’s side will be to all of us and how heavy our name will become in the world. Everyone will want me in their kitty group. Natasha will
tau
come on her knees.”

Jonkers was also a little bit septic about it.

“I don’t get it,” he said.

“What’s to get,
yaar
?” I said.

“Why would a girl like that from that sort of liberal family be up for an arranged marriage?”

“All I know, Jonkers, is that she is and if I were you I’d just think of how nice it would be to have a nice young rich wife and not take out faults in her.”

“But even our backgrounds, which you put so much store by, don’t match. She’s far richer than me.”

“Oho, Jonkers you don’t understand anything! Baggrounds don’t match when the other person’s less than yours. They match perfectly when they are richer than you. Okay, I’ll admit it is always better when girl is poorer than boy because that way she always looks up to him but don’t worry about it,
yaar
. Just like your name will become hers once you get married,
her bagground will also become yours. Life’s all about give and take,
na
. Let others give and you take.”

“I don’t know if she’ll be my type. I bet she’s spoilt and wilful.”

“Now don’t be bore, Jonkers.”

Of course we didn’t tell Janoo anything. Because if he’d known he’d never have come in a million years to Zeenat’s house. He thinks we should just let Jonkers find his own wife. What does it matter if she’s a secretary or poor relation, as long as he’s happy? I told you,
na
, that Janoo is crack.

“What do
you
know about what makes people happy?” I asked him after he’d been banging on and on about letting Jonkers find his own happiness.

“Indeed. What do I know about marital happiness?” he said with a twisted-type smile.

So anyways, we told him it’s just a dinner and because he admires Zeenat’s business brain, even though he thinks Shaukat, her husband, is a time-waste, he agreed. So we’re going to check out bride number one.

“Now
this
is what I call a driveaway!” sighed Aunty Pussy as the gates swung open and we drove into Zeenat’s property.

The drive was like an aeroplane’s runaway. I swear three trucks could drive side by side for five hundred yards till they reached the porch. Along the way were parked Mercs, and BNWs, and big, big Range Rovers and all the drivers were in uniform with caps like in Hollywood films.