In the ever-relevant words from the opening titles of my favorite Australian soap opera: “Everybody needs good neighbours.” I have not, as you know, always been so lucky. In Lahore I contented with octogenarian toadstools with grudges and long-range binoculars. In the States my few run-ins with neighbours have been limited to one party, a police interrogation, two theft reports and a stolen flat screen. Honestly, the whole thing makes me recall with fondness my upstairs neighbor from East London from a few years ago, the quiet and courteous Madam Xenobia, who ran an S&M escort service from her living room and remains by far the nicest person I’ve lived below.
Well, last night I got to know a brand-new neighbour. I had returned from a late dinner with friends and was singing a little Phantom of the Opera to myself (alright, belting) as I changed into my pyjamas when there was a resounding knock on my door. No one has ever knocked on my door. If people I know come over, they usually ring the buzzer downstairs or call me. Unsolicited knocks mean only one thing: someone is already inside the building and they are most probably not going to be nice to you. Sure enough. I opened it to a blast of abuses coming from a small desi woman who said I was waking up the entire building (unlikely, since they were all awake and partying). She said she shared my wall and could I please keep it down? She was dressed in Jane Fonda-style leg warmers, a crocheted leopard print sweater and khussas. This was at 11 pm on a Friday night in New York, so I know I had circumstance on my side. Gin had made me confident and we launched into a short but hotheaded quarrel, which ended with my shouting “Up yours, Debbie Downer”, slamming the door in her face and cranking up some Broadway tunes on max volume from the stereo just to make my point.
Let's remember that Nergis Mavalvala had to leave the country to pursue advanced scientific research
You can imagine how awkward it was when I ran into her in the hallway outside my flat the next morning. We both walked in terse silent unison past the door of my floor, down four flights of stairs and through the front door, hoping at each step the other would veer off in another direction. Eventually we realised we were both headed to the coffee shop around the corner. She spoke first.
“Look,” she said, not looking at me. “I’m sorry if I was out of line last night. I had just had a long day and my roommate had spilled stuff everywhere and, well, I acted out of line. I’m sorry.”
The achievements of young Pakistani women are difficult to swallow for some conservative sections of society
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, slightly mollified. “I was probably too loud. I’m sorry too. I’ll try and keep it down.”
As a sign of reconciliation and gratitude at her mature apology, I bought her a cup of coffee and found out she is from Karachi (go figure). Her name is Sara and she moved into the apartment next door to me a month ago while she transitions to another place but has been in grad school in the city for a few years. Her Ph.D is in some terribly difficult off-shoot of neuroscience that I can’t remember, but I think that explains why she wasn’t singing on a Friday night.
I was quite impressed, to be honest.
In fact I’ve been impressed with girls from Karachi this whole week. Earlier on we found out that Einstein’s theory on gravitational waves has finally been proven right and one of the MIT scientists responsible for their discovery is a woman called Nergis Mavalvala. She comes from a Parsi family in Karachi and had moved to the States during her teens. This is deeply cool. Pakistanis are often in search of desi extra-terrestrial intelligence, people of the diaspora who have gone and made it big abroad. This is not a bad thing at all when we find people who have been part of existential successes like Mavalvala. She was a MacArthur Fellow in 2010 for working on gravitational fields, so, you know, she’s been cool for a while. There have been a number of articles on this newfound “Daughter of Pakistan”, as if somehow the country can claim ownership of her success. I don’t want to debate whether or not it can, because I know I am proud of her, but I do wish to point out two things that we should perhaps think about a little more. One is that she had to leave the country to be able to pursue advanced scientific research, and Two is that we still don’t give half as much press to our Ahmadi Nobel laureate for Physics Abdus Salam. Just saying.
Another woman from Karachi has also been in the news lately. Our resident Oscar winner “I-know-Madonna-who-do-you-know?-yeah-I-thought-so” Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (who, like Sarah Jessica Parker, is somehow always referred to by all three names) has been nominated for another Oscar for her documentary short film on honor killings. This is also deeply cool. (The Oscar nod, not the killing.) The movie was screened at the recent Karachi Literature Festival and so far I’ve heard only good things, or as many good things as you can muster after an intense documentary on honor killings. Karachi, it can be safely said, is on fleek when it comes to producing powerhouse women of achievement.
As I type that I can sense the clenching claws of the fashionistas of Lahore and the Embassy party-hoppers of Islamabad. Girls, you need to seriously up your game.
Perhaps we will find out about some other major intellectual achievements at the Lahore Literary Festival, which should be in full swing as you read this. It remains my favorite event of the Lahori social calendar and I really wish that I could be there for it (the tagline of the event should be “LLF: Because Basant is Over”). It’s been a year since I missed the last one because of jaundice (but also a year since I had my last cigarette on its grounds, so…) and I hope everyone has as much fun attending it as I am sure I will when I read about it in passive-aggressive tweets online. Happy festivalising Lahore!
