Yesterday was a restful sort of day except in the afternoon my father and aunt insisted I join the latter to attend a tea party hosted by the groom’s aunt. I had originally said I wouldn’t, but the social pressure was strong, and I felt obliged for my sister’s sake, so I went along. We ended up spending more time in traffic than at the place itself (it was around 5, rush hour, and the house is in a very busy part of Karachi), and I certainly missed New Zealand at that time. But it was nice to go through some of the parts of Karachi that are as I remember them from my childhood, with old decaying buildings, white art deco, heroin users sprawled over rubbish dumps, etc. Well, the latter is not particularly something to enjoy, but they have certainly been removed from some areas of Karachi. I find it difficult to look at Clifton these days, with its flyovers forming barriers between the sea and the city.
The tea itself was short and reasonably pleasant, though I got irritated at one of the people there who clearly thought a great deal of her own wit, and the hostess assumed I must be dieting. A group of us have made a plan to go to Eat Karachi today (Friday), where I have also promised to try the Dorito chaat, though I must say, I find Doritos, and the thought of Dorito chaat, quite repellent. I am not a fan of junky snack foods other than nimko etc.
On the way back we collected the cousin’s wife from the salon where she and her mother were dressing for what appeared to be a truly epic family wedding; 400 people every night for a series of events and 2000 people invited to the actual wedding. It made me want to close my eyes and go to sleep just thinking about it, but clearly others enjoy that sort of thing.
I heard (from someone not mentioned in this post) perhaps the most ridiculous conspiracy theory I have yet encountered: that a hit on Qandeel Baloch was ordered by the spouse of a senior politician with a very different dress sense. This nonsense was delivered in that serious, ponderous tone used by men of little brain.
(What a grumpy post this is, but there it is).
A breath of fresh air, literally, in the evening, when an aunt and I went out for tea at a lovely little cafe in Boat Basin. Its walls are painted with portraits of hundreds of men and women through Pakistan’s history. I sat facing Mashal Khan, Cyril Almeida, Asma Jehangir and Amjad Sabri, and thought what a dreadful history we have, what a terrible decade we have had.