Duty Free by Moni Mohsin

Author:Moni Mohsin [Mohsin, Moni]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-88925-6
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2011-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

31 October

Today is Holloween. Kulchoo’s been invited to a fancy dress party thrown by the daughter of General Shaheed Bull. General Bull is owner of Punjab Chemicals. They have huge house on Main Boulevard with fifteen-foot walls outside with barb-wire on top. Just the kind of people Kulchoo should be making friends with. I shouldn’t say this because he’s my son but unfortunately, Kulchoo is becoming antisocialist loser—just like his father. He won’t go to the Chemicals party because he says it won’t be a good scene. So I told him the scene would be very nice because Sunny tells me the floors are of Italian marble and there are fountains inside and—

“Not that kind of scene,” he groaned.

“Then what type scene?”

“The social scene. You don’t know the kind of kids who’ll be there.”

“I know them. They are all nice, rich children from nice, rich homes.”

“Yeah, right. They’re all obnoxious, rich kids who get high on coke, and then go looking for a phudda.”

“So who’s asking you to fight with them? You sit on one side talking nicely and if they offer you Coke, you say no thanks, I’ll take Fanta.”

“Jeez, mum, not that Coke. Forget it. I’m going to Farhad’s house. More my thing.”

See what I mean about antisocialist loser? Farhad’s father has a small business doing land-escape gardening. His mother does dramas in the TV about bore, bore things like honour killings and child marriages and female infanty-side, all the unpatriotic things that give bad impression about us to foreigners. She wears cotton saris and her glasses on a string round her neck and her hair in a grey bun. Bore NGO-type, if you know what I mean. And they live in a small house near the Ganda Nala. Farhad wants to be an artist. Not a business magnet, not a politician, not a general but an artist. Loser. He makes these big, big paintings with cartoon-type people fighting with sticks against really loud, gody yellow and red baggrounds and Janoo says they are clever and witty but I think so they are useless.

Last time Farhad was here I asked him why he didn’t make nice scenes of fields and trees and clouds in greens and beiges that matched my curtains and sofas? That way he would become Lahore’s top artist because all my friends would buy. But before he could make a reply, Kulchoo grabbed him by the arm and said, “Farhad, yaar, come and see this fantastic new computer game I’ve got,” and pushed him out of the room. I don’t know where Kulchoo’s manners have gone. Honestly.

I said to Janoo, last year we were invited to three Holloween parties and this year we’ve only been invited to one. Why are there no more witches’ and monsters’ parties this year? And Janoo said it was because everyday life had become a waking nightmare. Why wait till 31 October, when horror was being visited on us every day? And I said to Janoo, I said, “Janoo, I think so you need to go on Prozac.

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