You tau know what a sophisty socialist I am and how much I love parties and balls and bling and hanging out with everyone who’s everyone. So, I never thought I’d ever say this in a hundred million years, but bhai, I’m tau getting a little bit tired of shaadis.

It’s not that I’ve become a budhi rooh like Janoo or anything, God forbid, or grown old or anything, touch my ears, bite my tongue, but it’s just that it’s so cold and oopar se rainy, and then there’s The Smog. And all the weddings crammed together, like a traffic jam, in these same two, three weeks. And people also doing events in far, far places, farmhouse this and pleasure garden that, in the bag of beyond.

And if you miss even a single function out of the nine they’re having, then they mind karo and they stop inviting you to their khaanas and their parties, and before you know it, you’ve ended up like a ghost in a movie, where you keep going up to people and standing in front of them and talking shalking, but they just look through you, as if you weren’t there. The only people who can see you are seriously weird. Or else, dead themselves. So really, you have no choice but to go.

So, you slap on your face, you put on your jewellery, you throw on your jorra and you squeeze your aching feet into your golden heels, and you get into your car and you go and you go and you go and, after two full hours of going, you still haven’t reached the shaadi ki place.

The never-ending wedding season in The Smog has left an exhausted Butterfly seeking inspiration from the industriousness of retired generals

And with Janoo grumbling all the way like a broken record about why people are so inconsiderate, so selfish, so pata nahin kya kya. As if I’m a peacemaker in their hearts and I know unki under ki baat.

Meanwhiles, you don’t know where you are, because fog is like cotton wool outside. And the driver is peering into the swirling, whirling darkness ahead and muttering under his breaths. It’s like being invited to a destination wedding, but destination is not Koh-i-Samui or Lisben, but Phase Eighty-Nine, Defence.

Anyways, in these last two weeks, I’ve bhugtaoed eight weddings now, with at least four functions each. No wonders I’m nearly at the end of my feather.

You know, sheeps and ducks vaghera, they are much cleverer than us. They have their mating season in spring, when weather is nice and smog is little. Only we are stupid enough to have it now. Chalo. Not much longer to go now. With only three more shaadis to attend, I can see a halki si light at the end of the funnel. Unless it’s a truck laden with sugarcanes heading straight at me, which I can’t see because of The Smog.

It wouldn’t be so bad to get to these destinations if Google Maps ka sahara hota. But thanks to the inner net being what it is, that even we don’t have. Mulloo was telling me it’s all the fault of sharks and turtles vaghera. Being plasticarians — that’s like being a vegetarian, but instead of liking veggies, you like plastics — they’ve eaten our inner net cables running on the ocean floor.

But why do sharks have a soft sport for our cables and no other country’s? I asked Mulloo. ‘But ab, what to say?’ she said. ‘Our fibres must be like our mangoes — extra juicy. And the sharks around here must also be fussy eaters, naa. Aur kya?’

But a retired general, who is PTA chairman, says inner net blocking is “legal grey area.” I don’t know what that means, but I’m so happy to know that a retired general is also doing the looking after of our cables.

Vaisay, have you noticed how hardworking generals are? They never retire. Even when they are aged and they say they are retired, they keep on working, like busy bees. If not chairmanning Wapda or PIA, then building housing societies and designing golf courses and running shaadi halls and selling meat and fertiliser and even knitwear. So hardworking and talented also at multi-tasking, mashallah se.

And here I am, after just nine weddings in three weeks, ready to embrace permanent retirement. Shame on me.

Published in Dawn, EOS, January 12th, 2025