Tender Hooks

Moni Mohsin

Description

After freeing her darling son, Jonkers, from the clutches of his low class, slutty secretary, Aunty Pussy has charged Butterfly with finding him a new wife-a rich, fair, beautiful, old family type. Quickly. But who wants to marry poor, plain, die-vorced Jonkers? As Butterfly schemes her way through shaadis, GTs (oho baba, Get Togethers!), and kitty parties trying to find a suitable girl from the right bagground, she discovers to her dismay that her hapless cousin has his own ideas about his perfect mate. And secretly she may even agree!Full of wit and wickedness, Tender Hooks is another delightful romp through Pakistani high society from the bestselling author of The Diary of a Social Butterfly.

Informations

• Publié par: Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd.
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788184002119
• Langue: English

Extrait

RANDOM HOUSE INDIA
Published by Random House India in 2011
Copyright Moni Mohsin 2011
Random House Publishers India Private Limited
Windsor IT Park, 7th Floor, Tower-B,
A-1, Sector-125, Noida-201301, U.P.
Random House Group Limited
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road
London SW1V 2SA
United Kingdom
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author s and publisher s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
EPUB ISBN 9788184002119
Shazad,
Laila,
and
Faiz
Twin suicide attacks kill 23 in Peshawar
You know Jonkers, na? Oho baba, what s happened to you? Everything you are forgetting. I think so you must have got sterile dementia. Like poor old Uncle Cock-up. All right, I ll tell you again, but only this one time. Next time you ask I m not telling, okay? Jonkers is my cousin. He s my Aunty Pussy s one and only child. Her sun and air. Who is Aunty Pussy? Honestly! I can t believe I m hearing this. Next you ll be asking me your own name. Aunty Pussy is Mummy s cousin from her mother s side. Their mummies were sisters. If I was English I d say Jonkers was my first cousin once removed. As if cousins were bikini lines, once removed, twice removed, hundred times removed, but still there. And Uncle Cock-up is his father.
Haan, so where was I? Yes, Jonkers. It was his thirty-seventh birthday last night and Aunty Pussy took us all-Mummy, me, her, and Jonkers also-to Cuckoo s restaurant for dinner in the Old City next to the Badshahi Mosque. I like Cuckoo s because everyone says it s tabahi. Foreigners tau just love coming here. Or they did before the suicide bombs started in Lahore also. It s a bit bore that Cuckoo s is in the Old City, with its bad toilet smells and all its crumbly-crumbly, old-old houses, but at least all those prostitutes who used to live nearby in the Diamond Market have gone off to Defence Housing Society to live in little kothis their politician and feudal boyfriends have bought them. So no chance, thanks God, of bumping into bad charactered types. Unless it s suicide bombers, of course. But them tau you can bump into anywhere, thanks to the army which has given jihadis safe heavens all over Pakistan.
And also it s a bit bore that you have to climb fifty-five thousand steps to get on top of Cuckoo but view from there is fab. You can look right inside the coat yard of the mosque. But we couldn t because there was so much of smog. Lahore has three problems-smog, traffic, and terrorists. Otherwise tau it s just fab.
Anyways, Aunty Pussy had also invited Janoo (he s my husband, in case you ve forgotten that also now) but Janoo was in his bore village, Sharkpur. Okay, okay, I suppose it s our village because I m his wife but thanks God, I m not from there and I haven t been there for three years. Janoo spends half his time there, na, sewing his crops and looking after his mango and orange and kinno orchids, sorry sorry I meant orchards. But because I don t sew the crops, and I only spend the money we get from the crops, it s best for me to live in Lahore where the shops are. Aunty Pussy also invited Kulchoo but he said he was doing homework. His GCSEs are on top of his head but I think so he was reading Facebook. Such a little bookworm my baby is.
So us four went and dinner was nice and all but when Jonkers went down the fifty-five thousand steps to pay the bill, Aunty Pussy suddenly resolved into tears. She started weeping into her chicken tikka-actually just chicken bones, because she d eaten up every last bit of the meat. She s very careful that way, Aunty Pussy. She said how her heart wept tears of blood each time she saw poor Jonkers on his own, without wife, without kids, and what would happen to him when she died. I wanted to say that after you die he will play holi with all that money you have lying in your bank account that you were too much of a kanjoos makhi choos to let him enjoy in your life time. But I didn t say because it doesn t look nice, na?
And then she suddenly reached across the table, grabbed my hand in her thin, spidery one, and said, Promise me, promise that you will help me get my Jonky married by the end of the year.
Haw, Aunty I began.
But she gripped my hand tighter and shrieked, Promise!
Pussy! Mummy hissed. People are looking.
But Aunty Pussy ignored her. Promise me! she said in a horse whisper, her nails digging like little blades into my palms and her eyes boaring into mine.
Okay, okay, Aunty, I promise. I said it to get my hand back really, but the minute she d let go and sat back in her seat, Aunty Pussy said calmly, Now remember, you ve sworn on your child s life.
Haw! I never, I gasped.
No need to be so mellow dramatic, Pussy, Mummy said.
When you said promise, that s what I said in my heart. So that s what you ve promised, said Aunty Pussy, smiling a catty smile.
Before I could reply Jonkers came back up huffing and puffing like the Khyber Mail. And then, naturally, nobody could say anything.
When she dropped me home, Aunty Pussy rolled down her window and shouted, Remember your promise.
Interior Minister urges law enforcement agencies to make foolproof security arrangements for Muharram
Look at Aunty Pussy. What a double crosser! Imagine, doing that to your very own niece. Making such horrid-horrid promises like that in her heart and then pretending that I d agreed. I called up Mummy first thing this morning and I tau told her seedha saaf that not even my shoe is going to lift its toe for Aunty Pussy after what she did to me last night. And Mummy said, Soch lo and I said I ve sochoed already, thank you very much. Aik tau Mummy is also such a side taker. Honestly. Sometimes I wonder if she knows whose Mummy she is. Mine or Jonkers?
Today is 28 September. That means Jonkers has two and half months to get married in. Because I think so Muharram begins in middle of December and no body gets married in Pakistan then, not even Christians, it being month of mourning and all. So Aunty Pussy has two months to find a bride for Jonkers. She d better start looking, no?
And me? I m off to Mulloo s coffee party. All the girls are coming. Bubble, Sunny, Baby, Faeda, Nina. I m wearing my new beige Prada shoes I got from Dubai so everyone can see, and my new beige outfit I ve had made to match. I put on green contacts (blue is so past it) and my new Tom Fort red lipstick and now I m looking just like Angelina Jolly. But like her healthier, just slightly older sister. I know I shouldn t do my own praises but facts are facts, no? Pity Janoo is not Brad Pitts. But you can t have everything in life, as Mother Rosario used to say at my convent school.
52 percent of Pakistanis believe in black magic: poll
Hai, you won t believe what happened yesterday. I don t think so I can believe even now. I was sitting in Mulloo s drawing room sipping coffee and gently swinging my Prada wallah foot under Sunny s nose so she shouldn t miss that it s from the new collection and not from old, chatting to her about importance of good brought ups, when suddenly my mobile started playing Tum Paas Aye . That s my ringing tone na, from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai , my most best Bollywood film. The call was from Kulchoo s school. His stuppid housemaster calling to say that my poor darling little shweetoo baby had been hit on the head with a cricket ka ball and that his head had got cracked and he had fainted, but now he d come around and not to worry, he seemed okay, but would I like to come and pick him up? Head cracked, fainted, not to worry. Not to worry ? For a few moments, I tau passed away myself. When I came too, the girls were all gathered round me saying, Hai, what happened? I told them what happened and Sunny said, My son had three fatal accidents while playing polo and, mashallah, he s still fine, touch woods.
Just look at her, she does so much of competition. Not cricket but polo. And not one fatal accident but three.
Got Muhammad Hussain-my driver, bhai, who else?-to drive me to Kulchoo s school at top speed. From the car only I called Psycho. Oho baba, now don t tell me you ve forgotten Janoo s younger sister also. Okay, okay, her name is Saiqa but I ve always called her Psycho because it suits her personality nicer than Saiqa. Her husband s brother is a doctor, na, at Omar Hospital and I screamed down the phone at Psycho and said to her, I said, Psycho if you want to inherit those twelve gold bangles of your mother s that you have your eye on, get your brother-in-law to be standing in the porch when I arrive at the hospital. Aik tau she s also so stuppid. Asked lot of stuppid stuppid se questions like, What happened, Bhaabi? and Which gold bangles? Such a time waster.
Poor darling Kulchoo was sitting in his school looking dazed like he d just jumped off a marry go around. He had a towel with ice in it, pressed to his four head. I threw the filthy towel on the ground (God knows which which boys from what what homes had used it before him), threw the House Master filthy looks, and took Kulchoo straight forward to Omar Hospital where I marched up to the counter and shouted that Psycho s brother-in-law was my sister-in-law s brother-in-law and that I demand to see him there and then.
Thanks God, Kulchoo didn t argue with me and get all embarrassed like he always does when I jump cues and demand to see the top ka man. I think so my poor baby shweetoo was too out off it. Finally Psycho s brother-in-law came and did a city scan and an X-ray and an MRI of my baby s head and said he had a mild sa crack. Con cushion, he called it. I called Janoo when we got home and said Kulch