Unmarriageable(54)

‘Val, you’ve become way too sombre,’ Jaans said tipsily, linking arms with Fazool. ‘You need to learn to live and let live.’

Darsee shrugged. ‘Live and let live does not mean living consequence free.’

Jaans sighed. ‘You used to be so much fun before you went to America, behen chod, sisterfucker.’

‘Mind your language, Jaans,’ Darsee said, as Bungles rested a calming hand on his shoulder. ‘I don’t care how much you’ve had to drink.’

‘Ja-ans!’ Sammy pouted. ‘How many times should I tell you not to say behen chod, sisterfucker. It’s so insulting to women. Use your own gender and say bhai chod, brotherfucker.’

Alys glanced at her sisters. Lady was thrilled. Mari looked about to faint. Jena and Qitty looked shaken at how casually such expletives were being bandied about. Even Bungles was looking embarrassed and Darsee’s jaw was clenched.

‘Come on now, people,’ Fazool said, laughing, ‘no fighting on New Year’s. That’s a rule. The party is in the living room, the drawing room, and out by the swimming pool.’

Alys watched as Bungles whisked Jena away and Sammy, Jaans, Fazool, Moolee, and Hammy, pulling Darsee along, gambolled towards a room pulsing with disco lights. Lady and Qitty followed them, as did Mari, who’d only come in order to observe first-hand the misguided partiers of Pakistan, so that she would know exactly which preaching methods to employ in the future to return them to the sirat-ul-mustaqim, the path of the righteous.

Alys followed her sisters into the disco room. It was full of men and women lounging on settees. All nursed obese glasses of wine, cigarette smoke clouding every face. A few shimmied on the makeshift dance floor. Clusters of friends hung out by the bar, the bottles of Scotch, vodka, gin, and wine twinkling under the bright bar lights.

The Binat sisters ordered orange juices from the bartender, a Punjab Club waiter in his white uniform with plumed turban. Once they got their drinks, Alys seated them on a sofa. Then she left to explore the other rooms, where it was all the same, except hip-hop played in the dimly lit drawing room, where billiards was in full swing, and techno pulsed by the aquamarine swimming pool, where the guests lolled under the starlit sky.

Alys looked for Jena but couldn’t find her. She wished Sherry had agreed to tag along; they would have had a fine time deconstructing this social circus. Alys circled back to the disco room. Mari and Qitty were on the sofa, watching Lady dancing by herself to ABBA’s ‘Money, Money, Money’. After Alys decided Lady was in no harm or doing any harm, she went in search of a toilet. She passed by walls full of the most insipid art: pastoral paintings of mustard fields, watercolour sketches of rowdy-haired men on horses, and Quran calligraphy, which, according to Nona, was all the rage these days for both the pious and the not-so-pious art collector.

Alys passed by one young man instructing another young man on how to most effectively snort the cocaine he’d been guaranteed was going to be the time of his life. A young woman was complaining about how her bootlegger was charging her more for alcohol than her male friends just because she was a woman. A few steps on, a cricket star Alys had only seen on TV was politely listening to a mediocre but well-connected musician telling him that, though a dud at the game himself, he had advice for the cricketer’s bowling. Passing by two men, Alys realised that one was Qazi of QaziKreations and the other was another fashion designer frequently featured in Social Lights. They were engaged in debate: ‘You’re awesome, you’re awesome,’ ‘No, you are, no, you are.’ Then she stumbled upon Sammy and Jaans in a passionate embrace, whispering urgent terms of endearment – ‘parasite’, ‘upstart’ – and Alys tapped Sammy on the shoulder: ‘Where’s the toilet?’

On the way back, Alys passed by a room with the door half open: a library. Curiosity overcame her. Which books graced Fazool and Moolee’s shelves? She was skimming a cherrywood shelf of leather-bound classics, which she found were hollow—

‘We meet again.’

‘Shit!’ Alys spun around, a hollow book almost falling out of her hands.

It was Darsee. He was stretched out in a chaise longue, a tumbler of Scotch by his side.

‘You scared me,’ Alys said, annoyed. ‘What are you doing in here?’

‘What do you think I’m doing?’ Darsee held up a tome: Betty and Veronica Double Digest. ‘I just got back to the country, and I’m in no mood yet for Jaans and Moolee, et cetera. Their entire life’s purpose has begun to boil down to “drink until you drop, preferably daily”, while Sammy and Fazool, et cetera, are getting PhDs in congratulating themselves on being amazing. Ridiculous. Prefer it here, reading.’

Alys gazed at him for a long second, then said, ‘Looks like you and I seem to share this preference, given that we’re both in here instead of out there making fools of ourselves.’

‘I don’t know if I’d say you could ever make a fool of yourself. As for me, I think definitely not.’

Alys blurted, ‘I hear it’s more your scene to force your relatives into becoming fools.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Jeorgeullah Wickaam. Your cousin. The cousin you’ve treated abominably.’

‘I treated abominably!’ Darsee’s face turned livid.

‘Wickaam told me everything.’