I've just been mugged. I went outside today for five minutes to see if my lawn had turned into Noah’s Park after the toofani rain yesterday and it was so muggy, so muggy that I got mugged there and then only.

I rushed back into my AC wala kamra but the damage had been done — my clothes were drenched in aspiration (Mummy always told me kay ladies from good baggrounds don’t sweat na, we only aspire). My smooth si blow dry had become like More Sala’s hair and I’d got three mosquitos bites on my fourhead.

Naturally, I’m the only one who’s suffering like this because my whole kitty party gang tau is in London shopping and mingling and urrhaowing mazay na. Only I’m stuck up here in this muggy monsoon. And why I’m stuck up? Because Janoo has denounced kay Europe is too hot and crowded in the summers and it’s best if we go in October when one can actually enjoy the place without being shoved and pushed on the streets and cueing endlessly for restaurants and museums and sweating in the heat.

He’s a man na, so he’s allowed to sweat, even though he is mashallah se big landowner and khaata peeta from the backside. I’ve told him ten ten times kay how I can enjoy in October when sales have finished and all my desi friends have come home from long time back?

Butterfly smoulders in Pakistan’s humid heat while her kitty party gang and even her maalish wali are in Europe…

Sunny, Baby, Pinky, Nina — they’re all there meeting sheeting every day and posting IG slaps of themselves in Harrods and Beaster and Nobu and Anna Bells just to saarrho me. I know them. After all, why do we go to London if not to hang up over there with our friends from Karachi and Lahore and Isloo and make jealous the ones who’ve had to stay behind? I mean, what lena dena do we have with bore goras?

Yes, of course I also bump into my Indian friends from Delhi and Bombay and all whom I can’t meet any longer in Delhi, Bombay and all, but daily uthhna bethna is not with them. Enjoying is with my apni friends from Gulberg, Defence and Cantt only. But majaal hai kay Janoo understands. For an Oxen pass, he understands very little.

Vaisay I’ve been watching on BBC news kay Europe is sarrhoing in the heat because of global warning. Florence is hotter than Faisalabad and Seville is worst than Sukkur and Athens is the new Jacobabad. London is hot also — from long time back people have been saying it’s a melting pot — but it’s not as bad as these ones. Vahan tau people are dropping dead of heat stoke bus chaltay chaltay on the street only.

I suppose one could go to Europe’s Northern Areas like No Way and Sweden vaghera to escape the heat but, in those bore places, what’s to do except look at lakes and pine trees and mountains vaghera? But why to spend costly dollars and pounds for that when you can go to your own Northern Areas and take your own driver and car and maid also. And pay for everything in rupees?

Maid se yaad aya, yesterday I sent for my maalish waali because now that I’m stuck up here only, might as well make full use, no? For the price of one massage in London I can get twenty here. True, the massage waali can’t speak English and so can’t give proper English massage, but chalo, kuch tau life main compromise bhi karna parrta hai phir. The driver came back and said kay there’s a taala on her house and that she’s gone.

“Gone where?” I asked, thinking kay maybe she’s also been swept up in the PTI waalon ka net. Maybe all along she was the mastermind of 9 May? Or maybe they’ve made an escape goat out of her and she’s sitting in Kot Lakhpat Jail instead of on some PTI Higher Up she used to massage.

Bechari, I thought. I wonder if she’s in C Class or maybe they’ve given her B Class? But then the driver told me that she and her husband, who’s a tailor, they’ve both gone off to Italy. For goods! Imagine karo!

Even they’ve become Ex Paks and I’m still here!

Vaisay just between you, me and the four walls, I think so only when rich people go abroad they become Ex Paks. When the poors go, they are refugees or migrants. Or illegals. Meanwhiles, I’m sitting in my AC wala kamra eating mangoes and watching Kuchh Ankahi on repeat (it’s my favourite drama na) and trying not to get jay or become disheart.

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, July 30th, 2023