Reading namaz in church...

A domestic help has most kindly agreed to work for my husband and I. I must admit that I wasn’t exactly excited at the prospect of being “interviewed” by her (to borrow a phrase from a dear friend who has been rejected in such interviews a few times now), going by her size and age, but so far (day four) the going has been good (even though on day one, I shuddered when she lovingly called me ‘bachchey’!).

Our new help is a Pakistani Christian – not a Pakistani Punjabi Christian, but a Pakistani Sindhi Christian. She speaks excellent Urdu, with a good amount of English thrown in, unlike local Christians, most of whom speak Punjabi.

Since many members of the minority communities have dual names in Pakistan, our help too gave a Muslim name when she was interviewing me. However, when she came in to work, she revealed her real Christian name.

Call it cultural assimilation or whatever, I found it rather awkward when she greeted me with “As-salam-alaikum”; when she began a chore with “Bismillah”; when she retorted with “Inshallah next time”; or when she showered praise on our cats with “Mashallah kitni samajhdar hain”.

I am aware that most religious minorities in Pakistan speak like that but I decided to tell her that she needn’t prefix-suffix her sentences with Inshallah-Bimisllah-Mashallah in our home. “My dadi taught me to say Bismillah. It’s a habit,” she told me. I didn’t know what to say to that.

It just reminded me of another occasion, when a Hindu shopkeeper in Islamabad explained to me, “Hamari do ‘Eid’ hoti hain. Ek Diwali, ek Holi.” The shopkeeper told me his community didn’t feel harassed, didn’t want to relocate (they had strong business interests and were well off) but liked to keep a low profile – and, of course, the two names – one for local consumption, the other for near and dear ones.

Another time, I heard a Hindu priest in a television documentary saying “Allah chahega to sab theekh ho jayega”, and our predecessor’s domestic help referring to his ‘pooja ghar’ as ‘namaz ka kamra’.

As per her terms and conditions, our new help wanted Sundays off to go to church. I asked her if a lot of Christians go to church, and she remarked, “Arrey, bahut Christians hain yahan. Namaz padhne ki jagah nahin hoti.”

Did you hack my account?

Like everyone else, I have been making the most of Facebook, trying to connect with Pakistanis I have read about, authors whom I hold in high regard, and, of course, ordinary people like my husband and I.

I was happy when an author, a singer, an activist, an actor and some other Pakistanis added me to their lists of friends.

The singer, who is a favourite, was quick to reply to my note too. “It’s always a treat to meet Indians. My wife and I would love to have you and your husband over,” he wrote to me. He even sent me a nice couplet on how Indians and Pakistanis had felt the pain of Partition.

I, of course, jumped at the offer. For me it was a double bonus – he was my favourite and I didn’t have to beg him to meet me. However, when he told me where his home was I realized that was a no-entry area for Indians. “No problem. My wife and I will come over. Just tell us the time and date,” he wrote back, giving me his mobile number, insisting that we should meet “soon”.

A couple of days later, I sent him a text message inviting him home to dinner. The singer graciously thanked me for the invite, saying he may be in concert that day. So I asked him to give us a convenient date; but he never took us up on that.

Around the same time, I added a young professional, who writes regularly for an ezine and occasionally for Pakistani newspapers. My husband and I met him at an Indian diplomat’s reception and, I thought, we got along quite fine.

We parted on a cordial note promising to keep in touch, regretting that we hadn’t met earlier. That evening I added him on Facebook and we exchanged a couple of messages over something he had written after attending that reception. However, when I did invite him home, he told me he could be busy that day and that he would confirm later. He never did.

I was beginning to wonder what’s wrong with my friends on Facebook, till I added a relatively unknown Pakistani, who in my opinion, writes very well.

Two days ago, I found out it was his birthday. So I sent him a message wishing him the best and the same day he chatted with me briefly. After the usual pleasantries, he told me his yahoomail got hacked soon after he added me and wondered if that had happened to other Pakistanis I had interacted with.

I told him I had no idea. The questions that followed made me feel like a suspect (I do so wish I had the brain/resources/time/inclination to hack email accounts). He then very politely floated the idea of deleting me. I agreed wholeheartedly because I didn’t want to be the source of trouble for him or anyone else.

Kya aap Musalmaan hain?

On our very first day in Islamabad, a Pakistani official, who had just returned after a stint in New Delhi, was surprised to hear that I am Muslim.

“Paidaishi Musalmaan hain, ya shaadi kar ke ho gayeen?” he asked me at a dinner meant to welcome us to Pakistan. Without any trace of embarrassment, he continued, “I asked because aap ke yahan to sab chalta hai na… (referring to mixed marriages in India).”

“By birth,” I replied, staring at his drink. He changed tack. “In Islamabad we use gas heaters,” he said, pointing towards a gas-fired water heater outside our home.

Our Muslimness has been post-mortem-ed scores of times since. Most Pakistanis usually have that shock-and-awe look when it dawns on them that we are Muslims: “Par aap to India se hain na?” or “Aap lagti to nahin hain.”

Some others give us a warm hug, “Arrey aap to hamarey Musalmaan bhai hain” (that one truly makes my husband cringe); and many break into the predictable rant: “Musalmaanon ki haalat India main achchi nahin hai, hamein unki bahut fikar hai”, or worse, “Aap pehle se Musalmaan they, ya yahan aakar huye?”

If that wasn’t enough, the ‘bhais’ from the intelligence agencies often scale us on our religiosity – trying to find out if we read the namaz, keep fasts during Ramzan and drink (that’s over and above their all-important dossiers on our favourite veggies and pulses compiled by following us on each and every visit to the grocers).

In India, religion never propelled our associations, neither did anyone make us so aware of our Muslimness. Of course, I got told plenty of times that I don’t look Muslim, mostly thanks to my gene pool (my rather unusual name is also confusing), but it never sounded like an accusation.

I am unusually high on patience and usually smile my way through such chatter, telling most people that there are more Muslims on the other side of Wagah. But my husband doesn’t.

Once I heard him tell the anchor on a TV show: “India has had three Muslim Presidents, one of the richest men of India is a Muslim, and of the two Indian journalists posted in Pakistan, one of them (my husband) is a Muslim, so we really are doing fine.” I found his argument quite convincing.

I had thought I had seen it all till I was referred to Islamabad’s biggest privately run hospital for suspected appendicitis some time last year. After the doctor saw “Indian” on my form, she announced, “Ajmal Kasab Pakistani ho hi nahin sakta…”

Then she saw my Muslim surname and said, “Muslim?” I said, “Yes.” “We worry about the Muslims in India. Look at the Muslims in Gujarat…” she said, breaking into a long monologue, oblivious to the fact that I was wriggling with pain and hoping she would get on with her examination.

Eat, drink and be Murree...

The late Minoo Bhandara was, in the words of his sister Bapsi Sidhwa, a “complex person”. He ran the Islamic world’s most successful brewery in a country where some 97 per cent of the people are barred from drinking alcohol and was a fierce champion of the secular Pakistan envisioned by Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

So when friends and relatives of the late Bhandara, who died nearly two years ago after being seriously injured in a road accident in China, gathered at his home near the famous Murree Brewery in Rawalpindi on March 21 for the launch of a book of his selected writings, there was nothing maudlin about the event.

The people had come together, as Sidhwa put it, to celebrate Minocher Peshaton Bhandara’s life and speaker after speaker recounted colourful stories that showed he was indeed one of Pakistan’s foremost champions of secularism and entrepreneurship. 

“He made many enemies but he held enmity towards none,” Sidhwa told the gathering that included businessmen, diplomats and prominent members of Pakistan’s minority Parsi community to which Bhandara belonged.

And it was an unusual sight to see shalwar kameez-clad waiters serving chilled beer among guests seated on the lawn of Bhandara’s house, located a stone’s throw from the official residence of the Pakistan Army chief. Ah well, at least one former occupant of Army House – General Pervez Musharraf – was known to favour a Johnny Walker Black Label Scotch or two in the evenings.

Bhandara’s son Isphanyar told me his father had always held fast to Jinnah’s vision of a Pakistan where “all angularities of the majority and minority communities...will vanish”.   

“My father was the biggest fan of Quaid-e-Azam (Jinnah)’s speech of August 11, 1947 to the constituent assembly of Pakistan, in which he said people should not be judged by their religion and should be free to go to their mosques and mandirs,” said Isphanyar.

“My father was also a staunch believer in India-Pakistan friendship and led many peace missions to India. Honesty and speaking the truth were two hallmarks of his life as a businessman and politician,” Isphanyar said.

Under Bhandara’s stewardship, Murree Brewery’s turnover grew from four million rupees in the 1950s to 2.5 billion rupees in 2008, despite the fact that the company cannot advertise its products in any way within Pakistan and not many Pakistanis are even aware of its slogan: “Eat, drink and be Murree.”

Born in 1938 to a prominent Parsi family of Lahore, Bhandara graduated from Punjab University and studied philosophy, politics and economics at Brasenose College in Oxford but had to return to Pakistan in his final year because of the death of his father in 1961.

Besides serving as the managing director of Murree Brewery, Bhandara was known for his efforts to promote arts and his political career as a parliamentarian. He even served as adviser on minorities affairs during the reign of Zia-ul-Haq, the dictator who ordered that anyone consuming alcohol should be punished with 80 lashes. (As we recounted earlier, alcohol continues to be available, albeit at a premium, in most urban centres of Pakistan.)

Bhandara was also a raconteur par excellence, and if ever proof of this was needed, it is there in plenty in “Calling A Spade A Spade”, the new compilation of his selected writings. Beginning with a colourful and risqué piece describing an encounter with Hollywood star Ava Gardner during her visit to Lahore for the shooting of “Bhowani Junction”, the book contains a series of incisive and insightful articles on issues as diverse as prohibition, terrorism and nuclear diplomacy.

Love in the time of jihad…

Like all married couples my husband and I have our differences, but in Pakistan we almost always behave like the perfect pair made in heaven or in Bollywood – because the only time we missed the mark there was chaos in town.

Over a year ago, I was getting homesick and one day I shot off an email to my husband (that’s how I have always communicated about issues that matter even though in Pakistan I know that ‘Bhais’ are reading) suggesting that I move back to India.

My husband, who didn’t like the idea of being alone in Pakistan, read the mail and then decided to step out. He left home at about 9 pm asking me to shut the door, leaving me wondering if he’d seen the mail at all.

When he didn’t return till 11 pm, I decided to give him a call. I tried several times till about midnight but couldn’t get through. In India, I would have just gone off to sleep, but this was Pakistan – arguably “the most dangerous country in the world”. The more I thought about it, the more I panicked.

My head was inundated with the worst possible scenarios. I even stared at my phone wondering if I'd get a ransom call. And then I was crying.

I decided to make a distress call to a senior Indian diplomat. His first question to me was: “Did you have a fight?” I said, “No”, sounding quite composed. I even spared a thought for the guys who would have been listening to our conversation.

The diplomat asked me to check if my husband’s mobile phone was at home. I made a quick tour of the house, but he hadn’t left the phone behind. He made me read out my husband’s last official email, asked about his favourite hangouts and then announced that he was coming over with the mission’s security officer.

Within a span of 10 minutes I was flooded with phone calls – from officers, their wives, to friends – all trying to console (some “condole”); some offering me shelter for the night; some insisting that I relocate because “they” would come for me now; and someone even reminding me of Daniel Pearl, “another Daniel Pearl?” – but all genuinely concerned for my husband’s safety.

Just then my phone beeped. It was a text message from my husband: “Why is everyone trying to call me?” I heaved a sigh of relief and called the diplomat, who was on our way home, that my husband was “fine” and that he needn’t come.

But for him, the text message was not good enough. “How do you know it’s him? It could be someone else…,” he told me. I agreed.

By now the diplomat was home. “Ask him a secret question,” he said. I decided to ask my husband when our marriage anniversary was, but he dismissed the question with: “That’s public knowledge.” So I asked him my niece’s name.

A few minutes later my husband was home too – with all of us checking him out to see if he’d been kidnapped, beaten, drugged…

It turned out that my husband had gone to meet a journalist friend whose office is in a basement, hence I couldn’t reach him. Having read my email he was, of course, mad at me and was in no mood to rush home or call to say that he would be late.

That evening I realized that in the time of jihad it helps to play the perfect couple. I also realised the worth of our friends who went out of their way to help me, especially the senior diplomat who came home and kept his super seniors in the loop too. When I sent him a thank you message, he was very gracious reminding me that he was my senior from university. He even saved us any embarrassment by saying that he’d expect my husband to help his wife if he decided to go missing!

The nagging fear...

I don’t even remember the first terrorist attack or suicide bombing I reported on after arriving in Pakistan, there have been so many. Over 60 a year since we came here in late 2007.

Initially it was just the security forces – their vehicles and check posts in some place that was just a spot on the map for me. Then it was Lahore and Rawalpindi before the terrorists struck in Islamabad.

With each blast, things become almost mechanical. Calls to contacts, officials or colleagues with the same old questions – where, what was the target, how many dead and injured? So cold and clinical, like most of the stuff which journalists do in such situations. After all, we were always taught to be objective by seniors in our days as cub reporters.

But once in a while, the terror does strike closer to home. I still remember the call I got from my colleague in Lahore early one morning last year, saying he wouldn’t be able to work for the rest of the week.

My colleague is a guy who always has a smile on his face and an easy laugh, never takes an off (like most journos in Pakistan) and never shirks – but this time he had a compelling reason.

His brother-in-law, a major in the Pakistan Army who had been through several scrapes during operations against the Taliban in Swat valley, was ambushed and killed while going to the rescue of some other soldiers.

We try not to think about these things and put them away in some corner of our mind. While talking to folks back home, the usual questions about our safety are answered with: “Oh, we’re ok. That attack happened far away from our home.”

But the fear is there, nagging away in some dark recess. Having heard so much from colleagues about how the terrorists were using mobiles to trigger their explosive devices, I almost freaked out when I heard someone tapping on the keypad of cell phone during the Friday prayers at our neighbourhood mosque.

I ignored the instructions drilled into my head by my grandfather that one should not allow anything to disturb the namaz, and turned to see where the sound was coming from. It turned out to be a young boy in the row behind me playing with his cell phone.    

One tries to make some sense of the human cost of these senseless terror attacks and suicide bombings. Each of those hundreds of people killed that we report about have families and loved ones who will have to grapple with a sense of loss for a long, long time.

And one finally realises that one can’t really make much sense of things. What really drives these men who blow themselves up? What goes through their minds as they press down on the switch that sets off their explosive jackets or when they drive their explosives-laden vehicle into a target?

These are questions that people in Pakistan will have to grapple with while trying to find ways to end the militancy and terrorism in their country. We can only wish them luck and say a prayer for them.

(More thoughts on this issue by Kamran Shafi and Nadeem F Paracha, two Pakistani columnists who tell it like it is, here and here.)

Can you please repeat the question?

When “wukla”, “masail” and “bohran” were still alien words for us, our news updates were courtesy the only English TV channel then available in Pakistan. But it wasn’t exactly easy to follow the heavy Brit-American accent or whatever spurious combinations that hit our hearing apparatus.

My husband, being the perfect mimic, would do a “pohh, pohh, pohh” imitation of the anchor when it was time for us to watch a prime time programme on the channel. We soon realised we weren’t the only ones who had difficulty following the anchor’s accent. We would often hear guests and correspondents ask (read complain to) the anchor: “Can you please repeat the question?” And repeat the anchor did, sometimes not just once, but twice and even thrice.

The sudden jump from the Brit-American to very Punjabised/Pushtuised accents of correspondents and guests was equally hilarious. On the one hand, the correspondent in Swat struggled with his English and explained how he had heard “the voice of the helicopters”, and on the other, the anchor did “pohh, pohh, pohh” with a flourish to put the day’s news in perspective. There’s no denying the fact that the anchor is a good journalist, but the accent was just so out of place.

We’ve seen several anchors come and go on the channel since, suffered some smart alecks too (one smarty mistaking the PML-N spokesman for the channel’s correspondent; and another insisting on asking “Yes but how many were injured” when news broke on the channel that former premier Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated in December 2007.

We’d thought we’d seen it all till Miss Venus was unleashed on us. Hard news wasn’t exactly her forte (she did a good job reporting on a fashion event once) and it was terribly difficult to follow her accent. In fact, had her name not been flashed on the screen we would never have figured that out either.

She fumbled almost every time she opened her mouth when there was “breaking news” (read terrorist attacks), tossed her hair back and smiled her smile. So while my husband sat glued to the TV waiting for the story to unfurl, I did the next best thing – watch her colourful danglers, fuschia lip colour to match her coat, her broad rimmed glasses which she wore sometimes to make up, perhaps, for her lack of intellect…

To be fair, the same channel also had some of the best anchors – those who didn’t have accents. Sadly, some of them have had to leave after the channel faced financial hardship.

In the meantime, another English channel was launched, with some anchors sans accents, but we never took to it; because by then we had figured out that it’s far easier to follow news in Urdu than decode English accents. 

Cat house...

We’d been in Islamabad a few months when one morning we saw the following headline: “Cat House raided in posh Islamabad sector”.

A few days later, I went shopping for groceries to the out-of-bound Peshwar More market and on my way back hailed a cabbie. As I sat with my many shoppers (polythene bags) full of veggies, the youngish cabbie’s query had me shocked: “Aap to Cat House jayengee na?”

I decided to get off. As I was collecting my shoppers, he asked, “What happened?” I said “nothing”, wondering if the Urdu press too called a brothel “Cat House”.

The cabbie was insistent. “Aap ko woh Sector F-7 wale cat house jaana hai na?”

He knew my address too. I was furious. I knew we Indians looked different, but that different! I shuddered at what Bollywood had done to the locals. I decided to take my first panga in Pakistan. “What about that?” I challenged him.

“Aapko woh billiyon walle ghar hi jaana hai na?”

I heaved a sigh of relief. It turned out the cabbie had driven me home before and had met my cats in the driveway and decided to call our abode “Cat House”.

I laughed – glad that I had resisted the temptation to kick him. On my way home, we discussed cats and Bollywood – even though I was itching to ask him if he knew the Urdu equivalent of the real Cat House.

James Bond – Part II

Since my wife’s post on “Our James Bond” went down so well with people who follow this blog, I thought it was time for a Part II on the sleuths who are so much a part of our daily lives in Pakistan.

Like most Indians in Pakistan, I guess we have a love-hate relationship with our omnipresent shadows, who are now so much a part of our routine that we take them for granted. As my wife and I walked into a hotel’s parking lot for the Republic Day bash hosted by the Indian High Commission this year, a smiling man greeted me with a cheerful “As-salam-alaikum, kaise hain sahab?”

My wife couldn’t place him and asked who he was, since he obviously knew us. She wasn’t very pleased when I told her he was one of the “senior” shadows who usually oversaw the guys that stayed parked outside our gate, morning, noon and night irrespective of whether it was summer or winter.

Some of the James Bonds are more tolerable than others. Tariq was one who quite endeared himself to us. (I use his name as I am sure that’s not what his mother calls him.) He came up to me the first day he was posted at our home in Islamabad and greeted me.

“Sir, Tariq naam hai mera aur aaj se aap ke ghar par meri duty hai,” he said with a hint of a smile. I was a little taken aback as we were new in town then and most of our shadows kept a respectable distance. I returned his greetings and mumbled something about him letting me know if there was anything I could do to help him.

Well, Tariq certainly took me up on my offer. One day I got out of my home without Tariq realising that I was gone. When I returned several hours later, a sheepish Tariq came up to me and asked: “Where did you go, sir?” When I told him where I had been, pat came the reply: “Aur kahin to nahin gaye the?”

When two bulbs blew out in our home on a bitterly cold winter night, I decided to go to a nearby market and get replacements. I love walking, and as I made my way through the foggy night, a red motorcycle stopped next to me. It was Tariq. “Sir, where are you going?”

Feeling bad for the man, I told him I was only going to the market to get some bulbs. “Aur kahin to nahin jaa rahe hain? Koi party-sharty?” he asked. I assured him I had no such plans. “Achcha, thik hai sir. To phir mein jaa raha hoon,” came the reply.

It wasn’t exactly a one-way street with Tariq. My wife has a habit of wandering off while we are out together, and on one such occasion, she disappeared into a row of shops in a market. As I scanned the shops one by one, I realised someone was standing behind me. Tariq again. “Madam is in that shop,” he said, before slinking away.

Tariq isn’t the only shadow who endeared himself to the Indians. An Indian diplomat’s son once came home from school with an unusual assignment – his teacher wanted him to take photographs of himself with various objects and persons, including a policeman and a donkey. The diplomat was flummoxed as he had not seen a donkey anywhere near his home in Islamabad.

The diplomat made inquiries with his shadow, who offered to lead him to a place where there was a donkey. So, for a change, the diplomat’s car followed the shadow’s motorcycle, which led the way to a ‘katchi abadi’ – the Pakistani name for a shanty town.

The shadow assured the diplomat there was a donkey within the shanty town. But a new problem arose here – the diplomat’s son refused to wade through the refuse-strewn lanes of the katchi abadi. No problem, said the shadow, he would get the donkey out.

Soon, the shadow emerged from the shanty town, leading a donkey, and one very happy diplomat and his son soon went home with a photograph of the donkey and the kid!

Perhaps more surprising was the case of a defence attaché, who was greeted one day by one of his former shadows with a warm handshake and a greeting. The attaché asked the shadow why he was so happy. The reply truly stunned him – “Sir, I did such a great job of watching your home that I have been promoted and posted to the High Commission in London!”

The ‘Mr’ fixation…

It was our first week in Islamabad and we were looking for a “money changer”, one of those ubiquitous shops where dollars are converted into the local currency. There are dozens of them in Isloo, just like the paan shops in India, but back then we didn’t know any.

We sought directions from a helpful cabbie, who told us that there was one behind “Mr Books!” So we headed for “Mr Books!” and found none. We took the stairs, checked all the shops on the first level, yet there was no “changer” in sight.

We were about to call the cabbie names, when we got told by a shop help that the changer was behind “Mr Books!” and not “Mr Books Too!”

We looked up and realized that the guy was indeed right and that we were parked in front of “Mr Books Too!” and not “Mr Books!” On our way to “Mr Books!” we saw a “Mr Old Books”, retailing second-hand books.

Ever since we have noticed a “Mr Chips”, “Mr Cod”, “Mr Food”, “Mr Craft” and more recently “Mr Cotton” – I know that some of them are internationally renowned brands but I would have preferred the Urdu equivalents: “Mian Machli” or maybe “Mian Bawarchi”.

We have it all mapped neatly in our heads now. When we have to go to Super Market, our landmark is “Mr Books!” (we get off, and always ask the owner about Mr Jaswant Singh’s impending Pakistan yatra to publicise his famous book on Jinnah); when we have go towards Constitution Avenue, we know that “Mr Cod” is a good option to stop by and hog; and, of course, “Mr Craft” is a great place -- but just to window shop.

I’m certain there are other “Misters” too, like the one I recently noticed at F-8 Markaz. I somehow recall it as “Mr Munchies”, but then I am sure only about the “Mr”.

But seriously what is this “Mr” fixation? A techie who blogs as “Mr A”; children who learn about “Mr Potato” at school and a country which has a “Mr 10 per cent” at the helm!

Pappu pass ho gaya!

The Pakistani ability to tickle the funny bone has seen us through many lows. We knew we’d get a good dose of humour in the land of Moeen Akhtar, but such huge doses…

Younis Butt is the greatest of them all. He launched “Channel T” (‘T’ for Taliban, of course) on Geo TV’s comedy show “Hum Saab Umeed Se Hain” and had two Talibs speaking Urdu with a Pushtu accent. “The opinion of women will not be included on this channel,” they announce. In the next segment, the “silent segment”, a woman is scheduled to sing but cannot under the Taliban regime – so she sits, covered from head-to-toe, with her back to the audience for an hour!

Like all other popular Pakistani TV channels, there is a food show and a talk show on Channel T. The talk show is called “Aaj Muslim Khan Ke Saath”, a reference to the once ubiquitous Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan from Swat valley (now in the custody of security forces); and in the food show, men are advised to learn cooking from a male host and then pass on the skills to women who cannot be expected to watch a man cook! (Get a taste of Channel T here.)

We have some other Pakistani favourites too, like columnist Nadeem F. Paracha, and some others who are not-so-known. For instance, Khuroum Ali Bukhari, who posted on a blog that Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik had found “evidence” that 2010 would be a year of peace. “Well, we have evidence that 2010 is the year of peace for Pakistan, but it isn’t certain. We will need more evidence, so I am ordering an inquiry into 2010.”

Bukhari also has cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan say: “…You see, the Taliban are really quite sensitive souls, they breathe and eat just like you and me. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not pro-Taliban. I’m pro-progress. We’ve just got to separate the good guys from the bad guys, that’s all.”

Another favourite of ours is Tazeen Javed. Her vision of using a ‘halal’ browser, or a more recent post on “Hazrat” Zaid Hamid had us in splits. Hamid, in case you didn’t know, is the man-with-a-red-cap who has perfected the art of finding India at the root of all ills and problems in Pakistan.

We also keep going back to “Maila Times”, which is Pakistan’s thespoof.com. Their spoof statement by Rehman Malik following reports of the death of Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud in a US drone attack read: “By the grace of Allah, I can confirm one week after the strikes all previous non-confirmations of confirmations by us confirming the death of Baitullah and the non-confirmations by various officials confirming their non-confirmation about the strike and subsequent confirmations…we can now 95 per cent confirm that we have confirmed his death.”

But, of course, Younis Butt is the king. The spoof on the popular Cadbury’s commercial “Pappu pass ho gaya” is one of our personal favourites. The spoof had Pakistan People’s Party workers celebrating the striking down by the Supreme Court of the rule that made it mandatory for persons contesting elections to be graduates. The rib-tickling spoof on President Asif Ali Zardari has an aging Pappu who cannot contain his glee at passing the exam.

P.S. You gotta love this Zardari Shut Up remix too!!

Bhai tussi great ho!

We have a new Bhai tailing us. He’s tall, dark – and very handsome too, if only a princess obliged by kissing him as in the fable.

I spotted him circling my house on foot last evening as I was walking one of the cats on the terrace – yes, we do that for our cats, all six of them, turn by turn, every day.

Bhai  was zeroing in on our house time and again because we had a coaster-full (that’s what a mini-bus is called in Pakistan) of people from a TV news channel sipping ginger tea with my husband, when I decided to beat Bhai at his game by keeping an eye on him too.

Soon enough I saw Bhai accosting one of the TV crew. The crew member was on the phone and Bhai couldn’t wait for him to finish. Bhai grabbed the crew member’s huge ID card, hanging around his neck like a school kid’s water bottle, and started talking. The crew member had to hang up.

Usually I wouldn’t waste time staring at Bhai-types, but this time I had no option. We’ve been without a maid for a few weeks now (yes, the pregnant one I wrote about has disappeared since) and the rumour mill has it that the Bhais have been shooing away all prospective candidates from our gate by telling them – “why do you want to work here”; roughly translated that should mean: “don’t you know they are Indians?”

So I stared hard at the Bhai; noticed his regular-fit denims, his colourless half-sweater and even his sandals (Bata, for sure). I stared because I had lined up a new maid with great difficulty and wanted to make sure that he didn’t scare her away too.

Bhai was in two minds. Sometimes he checked me out, perhaps wondering why I was checking him out; sometimes he did the next best thing – stare at my cat. My cat, of course, didn’t mind, because he’s cute and is quite used to being coochie-cooed by silly strangers.  

A few minutes later the maid showed up with her husband and Bhai decided to check their NIC (National Identity Card). The husband obliged and was let in because, by then, I was at the gate ready to breathe down Bhai’s neck.

My hard work had obviously paid off.  I was ecstatic. The maid moved in a few hours later; showed up for work this morning, promising to return at 5pm.

She was back half an hour before the promised time, to tell us she had packed and was leaving. 

When life isn’t easy...

When our Pakistan posting finally came through after a 10-month long suspense of “will they, won’t they give us visas”, it wasn’t exactly a happy moment for us. My mother passed away absolutely unexpectedly just a week before and we were all in a state of shock. My mother’s passing away was the greatest tragedy ever for all of us, and I was just not prepared to leave my father, who had to be put on sedatives, or my siblings when we needed each other the most.

Yet three weeks later we were in Islamabad.

My father convinced me that I should accompany my husband and that it was okay to miss my mother’s “chaleeswan” (40th day ritual). “God will hear your prayers from there too,” my father had told me when I had argued that I did not want to miss her chaleeswan.

My father couldn’t hold back tears when I said “khuda hafiz” to him. He put his hand on my head, hugged me, and said, “There is no guarantee of life and death anymore.” I then noticed my brother breaking down for the first time since my mother had died. When my sister saw us off at the airport, we tried not to make eye contact, lest we start crying again.

We got the first taste of how our next few days, perhaps even months, in Pakistan would be when I made the first call home. For the first few times I couldn’t get through. When I did, my father couldn’t hear me, nor could I hear him. We screamed and then the line got snapped. My father tried to call us back, but the call never materialised.

It was just about the same routine for a whole week. I wanted so much to speak to my father, hear his voice and check if he really was doing fine as he had been claiming in his emails, but I had no such luck.

The day my mother’s chaleeswan was being held, I tried all morning to speak to my sister and my father, but couldn’t till late evening. Even then my father couldn’t hear me at all, so I spoke to my sister. She didn’t say much because she was crying.

I would often talk to my mother about our impending Pakistan posting. Sometimes she got excited about getting an opportunity to visit Pakistan again – she had visited Lahore and Karachi with my father to meet relatives and ended up shopping for our trousseau as well (including the gharara I wore for my marriage). At other times she wondered if a Pakistan posting was a good idea.

I allowed myself the luxury of tears for a while on my mother’s chaleeswan and concluded that the posting was not a good idea.

The events of the first Eid after my mother’s death were an exact replay of her chaleeswan. I couldn’t speak to my father (I got through, but he couldn’t hear me); I heard my sister crying and asking if we were doing okay.

After our first few months in Islamabad, the phone lines became better. I could then pick up the phone and speak to my father and my sister, like a civilized person, without yelling. My father could hear me fine too. Yet I will never forget that I couldn’t speak to my family, more so my father, on the day of my mother’s chaleeswan or the first Eid after her death.