my brother

miriam:

(just for making me blush)

... i'd mention a disgusting incident...happened with me...sometime in the last century...(just protecting the ladies involved)...

my brother wanted to get married to a karachi gal...what with al-nikah min al sunnati... ..i think it means marriage is preferable to living in sin...or someting pretty close...arabic is a foreign language...experts tell me the living in sin applies only to marriage-able and i suppose willing-to ladies only...ok will cut out the legalese...they tell me this al-nikah min al sunnati... does not apply to slaves and concubines...this reminds me of a poem on ghungroo and mangal sut'r i did recently but for brevity's sake i'd keep it out of here...where was i?

...yes my brother wanted a companion to do that legally...and we were here...(T.O.)...and all the eligible ladies we knew were of a more local disposition...meanig desi here...and he wanted the desi from there...now i do not do these favours for everybody...but as i have told you he was my brother...(still is..somethings cannot be changed)... i said i will sacrifice my holidays and we will visit karachi...in preparation for that visit i informed all my friends and relatives there of the holy nature and intent of our sojourn...all three of them...

...so now we arrive jetlagged and the same evening we went to this place for tea...the directions were very precise...turn right at the second chowrangi...turn left on the third road on the left...the one with the chassiss of a burned out car...there is a panwala on the next corner...ask him for hamidm sahib's house....(ok this is better than making up a name..and brother hamid would not mind at all)...

...so we arrive at this place and are let in the drawing room..after noons can be .....er....stifling there...what with heat and humidity and dust...khair...in the living room we are seated....an old dadi amman comes in and says something...she is short...all the grannys i know are short...and bent...and is wearing white...oily hair....thick glasses....really thick lenses....and dirty on top...did i mention she had two teeth...left...i mean teeth left...maybe that is both of us felt the need for sub-titles....but this wasn't a movie...i smiled...picking up a clue my stoic bro smiled...she smiled...

...then another old lady emerged...she was less bent but still in white and had oily hair...her words were a little more decipherable...she was the granny...that made the first one great granny...even though we were briefed a little the girl with tea tray was expected but had not materialised yet...there were some pictures of still older people in sepia toned photographs in frames that can be described as just this side of being labelled antique...the younger of the two old ladies tried to ascertain if my brother could talk...they had already seen his smile...everytime she would ask him something my brother would look at me... i felt like the third guy in the chair between nixon and mao...or between king fah'd and just about anyone...

...i know you want to know what happened...if my brother liked the lady...if she liked him...did they live happily every after...but patience...all in due course...so here we are...my brother is looking at me...in time the granny started examining my hands very closely...she watched my hands ( i thought) very carefully trying to see if i translated her queries in sign language for him to reply to her...at some point she spoke with sufficient clarity and my brother not only understood her question...god bless him... he also replied instantly...satisfied that my brother could listen and talk...she eased up and smiled some more...

...there were some more rustlings and we could hear some giggling...another lady enters the room...this is the mother...we had to nudge each other from falling asleep...6pm in karachi was like 4am here...there was a remarkable similiarity between the ladies...if my brother married their daughter we could see in 20 year intervals what she would look like...seeing we were sleepy the mother asked us if we wanted tea...did we!...tea came...

(ok have to rush out...so maybe another day?)