“You know in October, there’s this yuuuuuge art fair called Freeze. All the big art collectors, zillionaires, journos, museum wallahs and fashionistas are there. My Indian friend, Rekha, whose husband owns half of Ahmedabad, she dragged me there. So I took this antique jamavar coat I inherited from my nani-ma, and I threw it over a pair of skinnies and my Jimmy Shoes and uff, I can’t tell you, how crazy they went over me. All these cool types snapped my photos for their Insta accounts and begged to know where I’d got my gorge coat. I just laughed and said it was my granny ma’s”.
You know I never bitch but truth is that Sunny’s ‘naani ma’ was a darzan. Who sowed people’s clothes on her sowing machine and put her girls through English medium school. You know I’m not a slob so I don’t hold nani-ma’s job against Sunny but nani-ma’s coat, that tau Sunny bought from Mahtab shawl wallah three years ago. She’s been paying him in drips and draps ever since; she’s too mean to give him full money in one go. He brought it to me first but I dejected it. It smelt of armpits. So for Sunny to tell me about London – me who’s been going every summers since I was in Mummy’s tummy – when she’s only been going since her husband got that contract from his crooked cousin in WAPDA, is a bit much. No?
“Vaisay Sunny”, I murmured, “I’ve been going to London every summers since I was a baby”. “Only Arabs and desis summer in London now”, she giggled. “Us insiders, we only go in October”. “Or is it”, I asked with a sweet smile “because in summer some desi wannabe might recognize Mahtab’s jamavar coat, hmmm?”