I had my first bit of jewellery made today, so now I can feel like a proper Pakistani adult woman I daresay. I’m not entirely happy with it, and suspect I’ll have it remade at some time. It is stitched together of scraps. The centrepiece is a gold bead that my father found on our Badin lands when he was a schoolboy, along with broken pottery, coins and statuettes. Unfortunately all these are now lost, but in any event it’s a very old piece. The lands are where Rupa Mari, a palace of the Soomra kings during the Ghazni/ Khilji periods, used to be. To this I added some Bahrain seed pearls and Irani turquoise (thinking that both of these were suitable accompaniments) and Multani tulsi-dana beads, a geometric bead covered with handbeaten gold. It’s all appropriate and I think pretty, but is more ornate than I had planned. I might eventually replace the tulsi-dana with smaller gold spherical beads and remove the turquoise. But that will be on another trip.
Went for brunch with friends to Cosa where much enjoyment was had from mocking Mohsin Hamid. I freely admit there is an element of sour grapes there, but he is also quite pompous, both in person and in his copious op-ed writing. Less enjoyment was had from Cosa’s food (thematic unity here as it’s owned by Mohsin’s mother-in-law) – I dislike brunch as a meal generally and particularly dislike buffets. The pastas were good though, and the waffles weren’t bad. The fresh peach juice was excellent. The tea was Lipton teabag though, and made me grumpy. Nice to have salads with lots of green though I had to pick out the smoked chicken that seemed added to each to cater to local tastes.