“I’m so excited to show this one to you,” Adrian said breathlessly. We were on the fourth flight of stairs in a small building that smelled like cat pee. “It’s just come on the market, like, five minutes ago and you are literally the first person to see it!”
“Lucky me,” I heaved, clutching the wall as I caught my breath. She turned the key to a door labeled with a lopsided ‘15’ and flung it open with a flourish that suggested the beginning of a fantasy sequence in a movie montage. The first thing I saw was a grey wall with a circuit breaker.
“It’s a convertible two-bedroom with an eat-in kitchen, over-sized windows, and excess storage. It’s perfect!” she purred.
I walked around the flat, which took all of 10 seconds, as Adrian rattled off more features. I’ve been looking at flats for a week now and that’s enough time to turn anyone into a jaded walking lie-detector. The eat-in kitchen was a cubicle with a shelf that folded down with enough room for a plate. This led into a small room, about 6 ft by 7 ft, with a 10-inch window that looked onto an airshaft, which was one of the bedrooms. The other bedroom/lounge was a roomier 10 ft by 6 ft and boasted the size and girth to accommodate a bed but little else. I stopped and gazed out of the oversized window.
I want to take a moment here to flash Sri Devi eyes and say "How dare you?" to the Punjab Government
“Where is the bathroom?” I said looking around.
“It has a deconstructed bathroom, but that’s very in now.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But what’s a deconstructed bathroom?”
“It’s like a post-modern thing,” she said airily, avoiding direct eye-contact. Most of the flats in Manhattan now have ‘em.”
She crossed the room in two strides and opened up a cupboard, which I thought was a closet but actually boasted a small loo. She walked to the other side and opened another door, which held a 2 x 2 ft shower. This is not post-modernism, I thought. This is a catastrophe.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I started “The shower is in one cupboard and the loo in another?”
“Well, yes.”
“But... but... where is the sink?”
She pointed to the kitchenette, beaming.
“Adrian, girl,” I said, squaring my shoulders and giving her a withering look. “We need to talk.”
This deconstructed masterpiece was the 17th flat Adrian had shown me in four days and, needless to say, I was fast losing my patience with this real estate agent. I’m usually quite fond of viewings, and I like combing through listings online and browsing pictures while I imagine myself in different rooms, striking natural but picturesque poses against windows wearing an array of polo necks. But I had forgotten how much real-estate agents straight up lie, particularly in NY. Pictures of palatial expanses of wood-flooring and sunny bedrooms actually turn out to be dingy, smelly and dank little holes with exorbitant price tags. “Eat-in” kitchen, as we’ve established, means little more than creative shelving solutions. “Convertible 2 bedroom” really means a prison cell attached to a largish closet; practically everything is considered “over-sized”; “charming” means rundown; “cozy” means tiny; “hip” means dingy; and “up and coming areas” are usually rat-infested.
Sharmila Tagore's involvement in the LLF was hailed by Lahore's literati and glitterati
NYC is notorious for this deceit, despite the lies of rent-controlled apartments spread by shows like ‘Friends’ and ‘Sex and the City’ (how did you afford a brownstone, Carrie? HOW?!).
In the end I fired Adrian and found a new place in the East Village on St. Marks Place all on my own, which just goes to show what a looming deadline can achieve. Speaking of changing real-estate, I was so busy with work and the apartment search that I briefly stopped keeping up with events back home, which brings me to the beleaguered LLF. Imagine my surprise (venom/seething resentful dripping with arrows of disdain) when I found out that the Lahore Literary Festival had been evicted from the Alhamra complex by the petty Punjab government a.k.a Sharif the Younger the day before it was to open.
*inhale*
The dexterous organisers managed to pull off a condensed two-day version of the festival at the nearby Avari hotel (well done!). But I want to take a moment here to flash Sri Devi eyes and say “How dare you?” to the Punjab Government. What happened to the LLF a day before it was to open - literally one of the best public events that happens in Lahore anymore - was conniving, deplorable, petty, shortsighted and mean-spirited. It proves again that most good things in Pakistan happen despite the government’s presence and never because of it. I’m still not sure why SS didn’t allow the LLF to go on at its usual location (one imagines the catch-all “security concerns” will be used at some point to justify the pig-headed decision) or why this revelation only came to him hours before the opening, but rumours abound. One is that “the govt” (another catch all) wanted to teach civil society a “lesson” for opposing the awful Orange Line campaign; another is an altogether more basic revenge strategy for personal slights involving certain sensitive people. “Why” doesn’t really matter at this point, since the event took place anyway. The one thing I do know is that despite being as useful as a potato in all this, the PM wasn’t above summoning the actress Sharmila Tagore - who had come to Lahore to attend the festival - to his Raiwind compound because he was a big fan. FYI: When trying to leave Pakistan Tagore was sent back at the border for not having done police reporting, so go figure. The LLF, in its short life, has become a major event in Lahore’s calendar and one of the few gatherings that inspires good press for the country. It attracts luminaries from a whole host of disciplines, inspires reading, books, thought and above all encourages an open discourse among a gamut of our citizens. All of these things are just as important as bombing terrorists or building highways when it comes to our current existential fight. Its existence should be celebrated, nurtured and protected, not attacked by petty, shortsighted officials in charge of the very city it’s trying to elevate. Be better than this.
*Exhale*
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