M blogs on Daewoo

(This is the second time my phone has slipped under my seat to the guy behind me. I hope he doesn’t think phone smashing is the modern equivalent of dropping handkerchiefs. Have just told off boy sitting next to me for peering over my shoulder at my laptop. I hate Peerers. They are in my top ten list of people to decimate into blueness.)

Independence Day started off with a marvelous late breakfast of cream and mushrooms and pancakes with nutella and a gallon of tea. Marvelous breakfast was rudely interrupted by Poput who beggitiy begged for my assistance and even though I became progressively wary of her enthused use of the collective noun “we” – and then “we will get hundred printouts”; “we will explain to the RJ’s what has to be done etc” I went ahead and watched myself being rained inside Royal Palm for a good three hours. The rain zeroed in on pavements and streets making them look like self exploding bubble wrap. It became impossible to be just polite to anyone rained in with us, one of the unblessed was Mekaal (of MKB which doesn’t sound remotely close to DMB aka Dave Mathews Band, I wonder if it’s built upon the same concept though).

Mekaal: You know I don’t know why it always rains when we’re playing
Me: Maybe you should stop playing
Poput: I think you’re being told something.
Me: We’re not trying to be cruel or anything
Mekaal: *looks away*

For the record they put up a fantastic performance and the crowd was horrible old people and there is only so much screeching I can do from the front seat particularly since I'm there in my professional capacity. Mekaal was exasperated enough at one point to tell people that if they would stop eating, they may actually hear something. Had a passionate discussion on books with Nadia, an RJ. It’s so enlivening to meet people who relate to books as intensely as they would to a bodily function. That was meant to sound plesant, I realize the effect is not but I don’t believe in backspacing; it is singularly destructive in any attempt to have your own style of writing. The carnival was alright. Poput and I were sorely disappointed that one of the stalls which was enticingly wafting trails of black cloth all round was for puppet shows. We had been hoping it was an orgy stall.

Lahori boys definitely had an orgy; the streets were packed with packs of boys with ugly bandanas, maneuvering bikes without silencers, blasting music which had nothing to do with Independence, blocking Jail Road by stopping cars in the middle either to dance wildly around the traffic or to beat up the boys in the car behind them. I felt like I was caught in the middle of some huge intraprovincial gang war. Poput said I was just jealous because everyone was going to a bike party and I wasn’t invited. Policing was strict, while Main Boulevard was blocked off from one side and when the crocodile of cars was snaking down the Sherpao bridge two khakhi threads of policemen marched in the corridors between traffic with bamboo sticks.

Fatima is finally engaged to Jude and she refuses to let us have choreographed dances at the engagement party so her mother and I uninvited both her and Poput (who is fundamentally against choreographed dances because she and Munchie while great otherwise on the floor look like Pappu Saein’s dervishes on a bad day in coordinated dances). An engagement party is never about or for the betrothed. I’m going to renew my campaign of pelting Fatima with questions such as “Is he Ehl-e-Kitaab?”; “What if he’s not of the Book?”. “Tsk Tsk, suna hai pagan hai?”

Note: Chopping mushrooms is therapeutic.
Note: The best part of the carnival was the fireworks display, stellar fireworks being the ones that shot to a zenith and rained colored caterpillars from a smoky galaxy far far away.