On Sunday afternoon my father and I went for lunch to the home of his closest friend, a former military man from the mountainous north, with a very impressive moustache. It was a bit of a duty but not very as I’m fond of both him and his wife, who was very kind during my […]
The fat of the lamb
‘Lamb’ being inaccurate, as the animal used for Shinwari style barbeque is most certainly mutton. A couple of us went down to one of the better known places, Charsi, for a dinner of mutton, ordering half a kilo between us (leg and chops), along with a quarter kilo of rump fat, a couple of chapli […]
Crabs in the sky
Miraculously, I was able to leave the office at around 2; another could leave at 2.30, and soon we were on our way to Lahore. Cars are so much nicer than buses, there’s no question of it. Certainly quicker. It was a fairly smooth trip despite fears of fog until we approached Lahore — at […]
Meagre pickings
After working for much of the night on Sunday, I finally finished my work at 6 in the morning. Felt fine the next day, as I normally do after a night without sleep – it’s the second night that gets me zonked – just a bit slower than usual and unwilling to make much of […]
Dancing horse
Well, a slight exaggeration. In the morning my host and I drove down to Chakwal to the ancestral (my great-great grandmother’s) village where there is a family farm. It came into the family about 20 years ago as part of a settlement of a decades old property dispute and since then we have been trying […]
Days out
Yesterday I went to a conference where perhaps the highlight was one that almost no one actually knew about: that one of the virtual attendees forgot to turn off their camera and turned up wearing only a towel, and that too on their head. Fortunately for this person, only a limited number of people actually […]
A bit of shopping
Last night my host and I went shopping for me and I returned with three new kameezes, and narrowly left behind one more. I had realised, you see, that of the seven kameezes I had to wear to work, three were plain white, which was a bit much. Got home and realised that I’d spent […]
Natural history
I met a friend for breakfast at a boulangerie yesterday. This actually did have very good bread and even pastries – how Pakistan has changed. Of course they were very expensive, at least by local standards, but the croissants were flaky and buttery and the scrambled eggs were proper scrambled eggs and the pomegranate juice […]
Blessed Friday
Not yesterday, nor today. Pakistan has embraced Black Friday sales with its usual ready enthusiasm for consumerism. But one can’t insult the holy day, of course, hence the advertisements. Work was tedious and frustrating, and the only good thing about it was that I brought my own lunch and sat in the garden by myself […]
Weekend day
A quiet weekend day. I woke early and did some work, then when my hosts woke we went for a desi breakfast of halwa puri. This had its usual soporific effect but we persevered and went to a shop that sells the excess stock from Pakistan’s residual textile industry. I got myself a very bright […]