My friend Mulloo, she’s in jail. Or at least she was in jail for two seconds. She’d gone because she has ghairat, na. Even though she’s a woman and women only have izzat and not ghairat.

Men obviously have both, but women being half of men only have one. But then Mulloo’s also in PTI and everyone who is in PTI has ghairat, just like everyone who has Chinese blood has straight hair. And everyone who is desi has sugar. Anyways, Mulloo went because Khan Saab had given the call to coat arrest and fill the jails.

So Mulloo put on a khaddar suit, her trainers and her dark glasses and she took her fully charged mobile and she also took her maid to stand with her in the bazaar so everyone would know she was from a respectacle khaata peeta bagground, even though she was just loitering by the side of the road.

She found a busy road in the middle of a market where there was a group of police wallahs who were standing there besides their van, twirling matches inside their ears, and she stamped her foot and said “Mujhay issi waqt arrest karo! [Arrest me right this moment!]”.

The maid network spills the beans on Butterfly’s friend’s ‘Jail Bharo Tehreek’

So one of them, he looked at her and then he pulled out the match from his ear and looked at that closely and then he flung away the match and then he adjusted his trousers and then he cleared his throat loudly and then spat on the ground, but still he didn’t arrest her.

So she jumped into their police van by herself only and started shouting, “Look everyone, I’m being arrested! I belong to PTI and I’m being arrested.” One rehrhi wallah looked up and said “Baji you want to buy strawberries? I’ll give you good price.” And a beggar woman hobbled up to her in the police van and said kay please I have hungry children and if you give, I will pray for you and Allah Mian will send you on Hajj.

And when Mulloo refused to give, she said “Chal dafa ho fir! [Then get lost!]” and went off. But otherwise no one did any botheration. So, since she refused to come out of the van and the police wallahs had to go back to their thana, and they didn’t want to men handle her, in case she created a toofan, they left her where she was and gave her a lift back to the thana. And that’s how Mulloo bhurroed the jail.

But the minute she got there she whipped out her phone and called her husband Tony and said kay call our lawyer and get me bail just now only. And that’s how Mulloo landed up at home. And the minute she’d called the maid, who’d returned home from the bazaar, only to get her a cup of tea and two egg sandwiches and kicked off her shoes and settled on the sofa, she called up all of us and gave us a two-hour lecture on her sacrifice and the awful treatment she received at the hands of this crupt jhooti beghairat guvmunt.

But we know what all happened because her maid is best friend with Sunny’s maid and she swilled the beans to her, who swilled the beans to Sunny who swilled the beans to me. As Mother Andrews at the Convent of Jesus and Mary used to say ‘Truth will shout, child.’

Aside from Mulloo’s cycle drama I have to tell you about my rich die vorcy American returned friend Coco Caan. Vaisay tau she’s Kaukab Khan but the name didn’t go with her rich sophisty life in New York — they mixed up with Indian pot com millionaires who sailed in their own yaks and did their summers in Cape Cot.

And she had rich sophisty life because her husband did lots of ghuplas in a bank and became super rich but then got found out, and so Coco quickly die vorced him and rushed back to Karachi with all the dollars they kept under their many mattresses in their many apartments. And as you know, anyone who has dollars in Pakistan these days is King or, in Coco’s case, Queen, so she sailed into Sind Club and demanded to be made a member so she could mix up with the khaata peetas of Karachi, even though they can’t afford their yaks and do summers in Nathia.

Anyways, they told her kay women are not allowed to become members. So that’s how she found out kay Sindh Club is only for male members. Who knew?

The writer is a columnist and a satirist and has published six books previously, including the bestselling Social Butterfly series.
She tweets @Moni_butterfly

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 12th, 2023