Summertime

I was beginning to go a bit mad before I escaped Lahore for a visit to friends in London. I was talking to myself, which is not in itself an unusual thing, but even so it was all getting to be a bit too Clockwork Orange for my taste. I’m usually caught in an epic but embarrassingly obvious struggle against the “voices” in my head; critical and venomously articulate thoughts of self-loathing that make me shout out “Shut up shut up shut up!” to the air as I bide my time at airports or restaurants or parties – anywhere, really. It can get quite debilitating and I don’t blame the other people for backing away without breaking eye contact.

The weather in London was chilly when I arrived, and it remained a version of rainy/depressing my entire time there. Don’t let the English lie to you; they have no summer, only a half-baked spring. I only understood after this trip why they all get naked the moment a beam of sun escapes the clouds for a moment. (It was a welcome change from the heat that makes us all look like sunburnt jellyfish gasping for air on the banks of a drying ocean.) I got to the flat and immediately dropped my bags to run around like a deranged lunatic turning on every lamp and appliance and gadget I could find; and then giggled to myself wildly and maniacally as they didn’t go off because of load-shedding. Till my last day, whenever the clock struck the hour and the lamps remained on, I did a little Zulu Dance of Celebration and Salutation.

The room I had taken was meant to have an en suite bathroom, the ultimate luxury. Turned out that I had a sink and a shower, but the toilet was in a whole other section of the house (to be shared), making my en suite more ‘en’ than ‘suite’. Who does this? Who gives you a sink the size of a bathtub and a shower the size of a sink but no toilet? The English. That’s who. The same people whose residential buildings are so old that I often found myself hearing the upstairs neighbor’s phone vibrate. Jokes aside, there was a leather dominatrix called Madam Xenobia who lived in the adjoining flat, and I am morally obligated to withhold what I heard coming out of that dungeon. I’m just grateful there wasn’t a sink in my bedroom, which always reminded me of a prison cell design aesthetic, and is another of those So-English-you-have-to-clench habits.

I was disappointed to recall that London shuts down at 11 p.m., a big change from NYC where subways are open 24/7. Then I noticed that the English get sloshed by lunchtime anyway, so the timings even out in the end.

The trip flew by quickly with shows and museums and public gardens and private joys until it was time to come home. To say nothing of British telly, which is the smartest in the world mainly because Stephen Fry is on every other channel.

I returned to Lahore replenished and prepared to attack work with the single-mindedness of a fundamentalist, and as yet my energies are undiminished (I’ll give it a month, or a week if I’m invited to a really bitchy party). Strangely, I found the same feeling in those I met upon my return. Now that the new guys have been sworn in (third time’s a charm), there does seem to be a “let’s get this done” attitude in the air. The feeling of abject helplessness that defined the previous regime’s rule has now been replaced with hopeful helplessness, a step-up by any measure. This is less true of Karachi, a city still freaking out at not having electricity, which I had sympathy for until I found out that until recently they were getting 1000 MW from the national grid for free, which allowed them their delusions of efficiency. Do you feel the heat, Karachi? Yeah. Sucks.

What I was happy to reaffirm on my travels was how much of a presence Paksitanis are now claiming in the international press for things other than murder and mayhem. Posters of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid’s book-turned-movie, were plastered all over the London Underground and double decker buses; and British newspapers had op-eds and interviews featuring many Pakistani writers. You must have heard of Lahori artist Imran Qureshi, who was commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY to paint their entire rooftop garden area (I’ll say it again: the MET!) for the summer. He created a series of red splotches, which morphed in flowers and petals, an obvious reference to blood and carnage and the hope that (allegedly) springs eternal. I’ll be honest; I’m not a fan of the work, though I haven’t seen it in person. That, however, doesn’t change the fact that this is a huge – huge! – accomplishment for any artist and we should all be mad proud that when millions of visitors flock to the museum this summer, many will end up seeing Qureshi’s installation. In case that rousing speech of togetherness didn’t sir your loins, Qureshi hung out with Bono…

And, if you think that’s noteworthy, hang on to your pants. Pakistan’s less fake answer to Frieda Pinto, the spectacular Sharmeen Obaid-Chiony, whose global brand of cool has become so huge that I think it’s time she adopted an African baby, was hanging out with Madonna, reaffirming among other things your inability to do so. We seem to be imbibing that mindless sense of celebrity validation. As evidence, watch the fabulous fashion coverage of our National Assembly candidates. Tweaking from jet-lag, I switched on the telly only to find news cameras rushing up to candidates at the swearing-in ceremony, skipping their opinions on maternal healthcare to get to the real question: “Who are you wearing?”

“Who cares!” I wanted to scream at the TV between mouthfuls of Maltesers (Duty Free makes me Fat). “You look like Chastity BONO!” It wouldn’t be such an issue had most of the NA not resembled characters from Fragglerock (except for the Baloch, who look like something out of GQ). We have won an Oscar now and are hanging out with Madonna, and we have painted the rooftop of a world-class museum. I think we’ll do just fine. Wait… just one sec. Yeah. The light’s gone. Somebody call Bono.

This appeared here.