In quintessential Punjabi banter, writers Shobhaa De and Moni Mohsin parse the complex India-Pakistan equation-its politics, culture, fears, aspirations
In quintessential Punjabi banter, writers Shobhaa De and Moni Mohsin parse the complex India-Pakistan equation-its politics, culture, fears, aspirations.
So just as Moni Mohsin, who left her heart behind in Lahore when she moved to London nearly 20 years ago, and Mumbai's Shobhaa De had finished exchanging plaintive notes about how India and Pakistan had succeeded in dividing up not just the subcontinent between them but also their collective imagination, Mohsin recounted her encounter with the hairdresser that morning at the Taj Palace hotel.
"Please blow-dry my hair," said Mohsin to the hairdresser. "Madam, what side shall I keep the partition, left or right?" asked the hairdresser, seriously considering how she could employ her scissors to soon demarcate Mohsin's head of hair.
Delhi's predominantly Punjabi audience roared with appreciative laughter. The truth is that Punjabis on both sides of the border remain victims of the Mohsin-De school, which goes to show that class, or the apparent lack of it, still cuts across the Radcliffe Line. Of course, the big difference between the two writers is that while Mohsin laughs with us, her reader, via her scatter-brained and terribly Punjabi protagonist, Janoo, in her wonderfully frothy books and newspaper columns, De's urban and much more icy sensibility ends up pointing the dagger at her reader.
"What cloney do you live in?" is the first question Delhiites ask of her, says De, mimicking the Punjabi word for "colony" and pointing out that Mumbaikars in contrast only care how big your bank balance is. "You should say George Clooney," piped in Mohsin, a few feet away on stage.
De's paean to Lahore set the stage for the session, but the fact remains that the worlds that Mohsin and De write about with such panache are increasingly withering away. The air-kissing in Lahore and Delhi/Mumbai and the hearty silliness it represents is being rapidly overtaken in Pakistan by a fundamentalist religiosity that Mohsin couldn't help worrying about.
As for De's imitation-Jackie Collins avatar, she knows she's rapidly becoming redundant. In the Age of Modi, the Sensex is so much more interesting than sex. Imagine, Janoo, what the world is coming to!
Dear Shobhaa,
Hello ji! Soo much I've been saving to tell you since we last met. I would've come to see you earlier if it hadn't been for this visa-shisa ka stuppid jaisa nonsense. Honestly, kya museebat hai, yaar? Can't even cross the border without having to beg a hundred, hundred favours. It's bad enough that we have to go and beg goras for visas but you know pleading in front of desis doesn't look nice. At least not for us khaata peeta types. Unlike the poors who have to beg every day for everything, hum used to nahin hain na.
Talking of visas, suna hai our foreign secretaries have also been doing chit-chat quietly, quietly in the backside. I think so they are trying to do sulla after two years of kutti. Janoo says their talks have ended in stale meat. Vaisay voh tau hona hi tha. I mean if you're going to bang on and on about bore jhagras like Kashmir and Siaching and Sir Creep (vaisay, who's this man, Sir Creep?) tau naturally baba, you're not going to make any head away. Now instead of bore babus from Isloo and South Block if our guvmunts had sent you and me to do the talking, everything would have been sorted in the squint of an eye because you know, you and me, kitna kuch we have in common?
We have cricket in common, we have all our celeb friends in common, we have Bollywood in common, we have paans, mangoes, shaadis, shulloos and Sholay in common. And then we have all our Khans in common-bhai Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Irrfan Khan, Fawad Khan, Imran Khan, Reham Khan and, of course, never to forget the most important Khan of all, Khan Market. You know, for me, Shobhaa, first there's Harrods, then there's Dubai Mall-the one with the antiquarium with sharks and all and then there's Khan Market. Bus. As soon as an antiquarium opens in Khan Market also I will move it up to Number Two. Meanwhile, please accept my sorrys.
Haan yaad aya, we also have our TV dramas in commons. Mummy tau is totally luttoo over some cereal of yours called Chakori or something. Everytime I call she pretends she's in the toilet and so she can't speak to me but I know she's watching Chakori. Either that or she's got aerobic dysentry. Vaisay imagine wanting to watch a drama more than talking to your own daughter! One shouldn't say bad things about your mother of course but Mummy's such a dhokhaybaaz na.
But I must confess Shobhaa, I myself have become hooked onto these Turkish soaps that we're getting in Pakistan nowdays. Hai you have to watch. The men, I tell you, they're such hulks-tall jaisay, fear and handsome. My absolute fave was this cereal called Mera Sultan which was about Suleiman the Magnificent. I got so revolved in it kay kya bataoon. After it finished I called my Aunty Pussy and I said to her, "Hai Aunty I'm so depress, so depress kay don't even ask," and she said, "But why beta?" and I said "Because my Turkish soap has finished." And she said, "You know beta I tau swear by Dove. It gives best lather."
Haan Shobhaa, yaad aya, one more thing we have in common: bans! So for us basant is banned. Guvmunts says it is for our own goods because lots of kids used to fall off their roofs while flying kites. But what I'm wondering is this: if guvmunt cares so much about our safety then why they haven't banned Kalashnicoughs, haan? Voh tau you can buy as easily as chappatis in the bazaar. And also YouTube is banned for us in case we come across something that will shock innocent, pious people like us which if we watch by mistake we go straight to hell.
Also I'm guessing that it is for same sort of reasons beef is banned for you Bombay wallahs-hai, can I say Bombay or is that word also banned? Don't want to offend na, being a guest with a singly entry visa and that also after so much of grovelling-shovelling? And also I hear BBC documentaries are banned for you all? In case you get shocked by their contents? Honestly, it's so nice to have guvmunts that care so much for our moral welfear, no?
Vaisay, Shobhaa, why do foreigners have to make hurtful shows and say things that shock us so much? And also give such a bad image of us to the rest of the world, haan? I mean why can't they say nice, nice things about us? Between you, me and the four walls, I think so it's a conspiracy to underline us. That's the only explanation. Otherwise tau Shobhaa, we are advanced ancient civilisation, no? I mean hamari olden times ki cities of Harappa and Moenjodaro- bhai apni Indus Valley civilisation nahin thi?-in those they found proper brick-lined sewers and drains vaghera. Imagine! Four thousand years ago, when London and New York wallahs were wearing bearskins and eating keerha makorhas, we were sitting on Duravit kay flushing toilets. Ji haan! And last week a person from some United Nations ki branch came to us and told us that 40 million Pakistanis are doing bathroom in the outside and that this was not nice. I wanted to tell her that bhai, I'm sorry that the poors have forgotten how to sit on toilets and are doing bathroom outside now but it's not our fault if they're suffering from amnesia, okay? Aur bus, Shobhaa, at my end it's business as usual-parties, khanas, GTs oho baba, Get Togethers, weddings vaghera. Everybody who's everybody invites you and if you don't go then people mind kar jaatay hain na. So you know Shobhaa, no rest for us hard working types. Okay dahling, have to rush off to a kitty party now.
Mwah, mwah!
Moni
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