Of Desis and Diaries: Moni Mohsin's 'The Diary of a Social Butterfly' has surprisingly great social commentary
I live in Lahore. In a big, fat kothi with a big, fat garden in Gulberg, which is where all the khandani, khaata-peeta types live. And don’t listen to the newly-rich cheapsters who live in Defence vaghera and say that, ‘No, no, Defence is Lahore’s best locality,’ because they are liars. They are just jay—jealous, bhai! Honestly, do you know anything? No offence, but you tau seem like a total paindu pastry to me.
Most of her inner monologue, delivered in short chapters which serve as snippets of her life instead of as part of a larger narrative arc, uses a very informal delivery, as if she’s addressing you directly. That means that the language isn’t the restricted, controlled writing of a literary piece of text, but rather the more free-flowing form of speech. There’s a lot of Urdu interspersed within the English, and usage of slang words is frequent. Most of the time Butterfly actually says ‘Oho, baba’ or stuff like ‘Defence vaghera’, the sort of vernacular that a lot of the people in Pakistan use when speaking. The Urdu-English mix of words that’s pretty common amongst a significant number of private school graduates in Pakistan is also majorly present. In fact, language is one of the major ways the author threads humour into the story.
Sara waqt apne baaray mein jokes crack karta rehta hai. So self-defecating he is.
Initially, the way the mispronunciation of English words was used as a comedic tool made me incredibly uncomfortable. I grew up being taught to be proud of how well I spoke English, in a country where knowing the language implies a direct correlation to your social status since only people on upper rungs of the socioeconomic ladder can afford to send their kids to private schools that allow that kind of fluency in the language. I had to unlearn all my horrible disdain towards people who misspelled or mispronounced words, and as an editor still find myself falling easily into patterns of condescension when people make mistakes. So I started out uneasy, and slightly defensive because I found the mix-ups so funny, and it actually took a while for me to ease myself into how continuously Butterfly messes up the language to hilarious effect.
Look at Aunty Pussy, honestly. She’s managed to get a visa, not only London ka but also a Shagging Visa, which means she can go to France, Spain, Italy, vaghera.
What probably convinced me to finally accept the book’s dedication to such a form of humour was that it was so decidedly in-your-face, so deliberate and exaggerated as a form of comedy that after a while I was snorting at every other mistake. Some words were so ridiculous, such as liposeduction instead of liposuction, or proper-gainda instead of propaganda, that I simultaneously laughed while rolling my eyes. In fact, the book even provided me with some interesting insights. A few years ago, a friend mentioned that Pakistani people pronounce English words exactly either as they hear them or read them. This was an observation I couldn’t stop noticing once it had been pointed out. Since a lot of people in this country only learn certain English words through sight (words like jalapeno or quesadillas, read in menus) or sound (in TV shows or music), they pronounce them exactly the way they read or hear them. The protagonist of this novel belongs to the latter category, and mostly pronounces things the way she hears them (wardrope, bagground). It is this particular quirk that the author twists into the most unexpected places.
Mummy had just then only heard of a wonderful new medicine that everyone’s taking. It’s an injection that you put it into your face and all the lines and things vanish, and your face becomes plump and smooth like an inflated cushion. I forget the name of the dawai. Haan, I’ve remembered, it’s called Buttocks. Bus, I’m ordering two crate-fulls tomorrow.
Of course, the humour can only be understood if you know Urdu too, since a significant portion of the book is actually in that language. In fact, this might be one of the first Pakistani book that leans so very heavily on cultural currency and expects its reader to not only know the language but also the country, the history, the politics. It makes sense, since this book is a compilation of articles printed in the newspaper The Friday Times as a humour column almost two decades ago. That means that a number of the jokes are also pretty outdated, but most of the stuff is still hilarious, no matter how long ago it happened, so I was willing to give even the cheesiest jokes a pass.
Such a coo I’ve done, such a coo keh not even Musharruf could have pulled it off.
It’s probably a good thing that the book focuses so heavily on humour, because otherwise Butterfly would be an insufferable character. Her lack of self-awareness, her dizzying narcissism, and her disregard for her own privileged existence is offset only by the fact that she’s an utterly ditzy person. By highlighting all her faults, it is easy to feel as if the author is poking fun of her along with us, as if to say, ‘Look, I know that rich, spoiled people like this are absurd. Can you believe how absurd they can be?’
My friends are socialists like me. There’s Mulloo, Flopsy, Furry and Twinkle. Most of their husbands are bank defaulters but they are all very religious and upright otherwise.
It also probably helps that the author leans all the way in into making her characters as preposterous as possible. I’m not actually sure if people like this can actually exist? While I’m certainly a very privileged person in terms of economic security in Pakistan, the tiny 1 percent that this book talks about are ones that I haven’t really encountered. I’ve certainly seen them on the periphery of parties, or casually engaged in conversation with them during work socialization hours, but I’ve never really hung out, never really engaged in what you could call a proper friendship. Which is why you could say that this book was also fascinating as a character study. Was it possible to be this vacuous and inane? Of course people are complex and multidimensional human beings, but the strength of this book rests on the fact that it doesn’t pretend to cater to any such delusions at all. Butterfly is completely self-centered and dim in as obnoxious a manner as possible, which is half the appeal of the writing anyway.
Haw, such a big scandal in our group, na! Tonky’s wife, Floozie, has run off with his best friend, Boxer, who is married to Floozie’s best friend, Dropsy. Just look! What a tamasha.
I suppose another appeal could be that so many real life people crop up pretty regularly throughout the story, and even though I can claim ignorance on the ins and outs of the Lahori social circle, a lot of names were still familiar. There were more names that I didn’t know than the ones that I did, and it actually took me a while to figure out that living, breathing people were making an appearance within the text, but it did eventually click on. Funnily enough, the first name I recognized was a prominent Pakistani author when Bapsi Sidhwa was mentioned, which I suppose says something about me. There were also regular mentions of designers, businessmen, and other supposedly important people who move amongst the circles of the rich and the fortunate.
Uff! Itni main exhaust ho gayee hoon, na, after this three-city tour of that small Indian god, Aruna Dhati Roy. Ek tau I don’t know why people keep calling her a small god.
Even politicians got an honourable mention, which makes sense since half of those who live in Pakistan are corrupt and thus loaded with money, so of course their circles overlap with Butterfly’s. Also, because living in Pakistan means that you can’t avoid politics, since so much of it affects our daily lives day in and day out. The author adds this into the narrative by starting each short entry with a real life news headline which is usually depressing and bleak. This, coupled with an equally inane headline about Butterfly’s own life, only highlights how very far removed her concerns are from the reality of Pakistan or the wider world. But what amused me more than these side by side comparisons was the fact that things that were valid 20 years are still completely valid now. Back then people were talking about the Bhuttos and the Sharifs and the Zardaris, about how all these political dynasties are dishonest and swindling the country, about how they keep running away to foreign locations to escape the consequences of their crimes. Switch on the TV these days and you will find the exact same conversations about the exact same people still going on.
God knows who will come now. Benazir or Nawaz? I am tau so sick of that silly ping-pong. They come, they loot, they go.
Honestly though, Butterfly doesn’t really focus much on the politics. In fact, anything that requires higher order thinking or critical analysis isn’t really her cup of topic. For that, we have Janoo, Butterfly’s land owning, Oxford-educated husband who listens to the news religiously, gets depressed over international news affairs, and frequently seems to be resisting the urge to throttle his wife. Even though Butterfly’s relationship with her husband is dysfunctional at best, it might also be the thing that provides the greatest number of laughs. Weirdly enough, even though both husband and wife are poles apart in their interests and manners, I felt like they both cared about each other in their own bizarre way.
Honestly, kya ho gya hai mujhay? Tomorrow I’ll forget my own name. Janoo says it’s the onset of premature dementia. Ji nahin, I said, premature ho gay tum. I tau am always fashionably late.
It’s through Janoo’s perspective that we get some semblance of sanity, because Butterfly is consistently exactly who she is from the very beginning: obsessed with wealth and brands and belonging to the ‘right family’. I saw a version of this behaviour back when my mother declared that it was time for my brother to get married, and we started getting these ‘fact files’ about girls who were of marriageable age. These were lists of girls with their accomplishments highlighted but also mentions of their skin colour and their father’s wealth and their possible family connections. It was a bizarre, otherworldly experience to know that this was an actual business that so many people took so seriously and in so heinous a manner. Butterfly is an extension of just that attitude, which places a higher value on being related to the right people and owing the latest clothes/shoes/car, cranked up to a thousand.
I mean, they should know from just looking at us with our Jimmy Shoe shoes and the two-two carrot diamond solitary studs in our years and our nice-nice, fair-fair skin that we are nice, rich, khaata-peeta, khandani types who’ve been to London hundred-hundred times.
For the most part, it’s obvious that the author has tried her hardest to mould Butterfly into the very worst version of that woman you meet in parties who asks when you’re having your next child, why you’ve gained so much weight, and how much your husband earns. I’ve met multiple versions of these women, all of them with pleasant, simpering smiles, who quickly launch into some of the most uncomfortable question-answer sessions I’ve ever had to endure. At this point I’ve perfected the art of laughing casually at some of the most invasive questions or racist, backward opinions I’ve ever had to hear, which was probably one of the major reasons I could laugh through Butterfly’s obvious ageism, or colourism, or sexism.
Last evening we went to see Aunty Pussy’s sister-in-law’s cousin’s neighbour’s daughter, who’s slightly darkish. Also, they’re saying she’s twenty nine, which means she’s at least thirty three. Vaisay tau Jonkers also is thirty seven and twice die-vorced, but he’s a man so it doesn’t count.
In fact, it isn’t a far stretch to say that this book is a perfect microcosm of the Pakistani mentality and can serve as a pretty good text for analysis. Most students, when aiming to study a piece of text in relation to a country’s culture, usually go for serious, more literary works, but I honestly think that books like these are so much better at providing cultural critique. Through Butterfly’s diatribes on marriage, adultery, and how men are treated differently compared to women, we can get a look at how Pakistani society treats its women, and how the country really thinks.
Men tau are like this only. Everyone knows. Can’t help themselves, na, becharas, poor things. That’s why also all the girls, Flopsy, Tinkly, Bobo, Furry, are holding tight to their husbands. Their husbands may be bore, they may be crack, they may be fat, they may be ugly, they may be ancient and decrepid, they may be kanjoos makhi choos even, but it’s better than them running off with someone else and the whole world feeling sorry for you. And also wondering what’s wrong with you.
Some of the stuff Butterfly says can even be considered risky, downright dangerous. In the past few years, I’ve watched as there has been a growing intolerance in Pakistan for any sort of criticism of the army or of religion. As a country which already exhibits an alarming amount of narrow-mindedness, you’d think we would reach a peak, but we keep surpassing even our own heinous standards. A few days ago, Pakistan recently had the youngest boy ever convicted of blasphemy. So it was a little shocking to read the anti-religious sentiment so obvious on the page. I think a part of it was also because usually if books do carry such opinions, they are expressed through the mouths of fictional characters. Because of the soul-baring, diary-style writing of this particular book, it feels more personal, more in your face.
God is on my side. I’ve always known, but now it’s official. If he hadn’t been, then he wouldn’t have ended Muharram in time for Basant, now would he? So all the mullahs and sarrhi botis can go fly a kite. Oh, sorry, forgot! They can’t fly a kite because they believe it’s anti-Islamic. Their nikahs will break, or some such thing, if they do so much as look at a patang. Well, they can go and do whatever it is that they do, because I tau damn care, frankly speaking.
But the very personal, conversational style that we encounter throughout the title has been done on purpose, according to the author’s note present at the end of the book. And I, for one, really enjoyed exactly the way it was written. I don’t think it was possible to take so horrible a character and make her lovable in any other manner. Because all of the things I hate the most in my characters are present in this book but raised up to such an infuriating degree that you can’t help but appreciate the dedication of the author into creating this character. Honestly, my final verdict was that this book was fascinating to read purely because you can tell that this character is full of stereotypes on steroids, and consistently hilarious. On some parts I literally laughed out loud, which happens rarely enough for me to sit up and take notice. I’m not sure whether a non Urdu-speaking person would even get all the jokes, but for all my Pakistani friends, this is definitely recommended.
As my friend Faiza says, the latest accessory is not the Prada bag but an Indian slung over the shoulder. So when Didi and Sally and Minnoo can have rich-rich Indian friends, why can’t I, hain? I am also not me, bachoo, if I don’t hook a big, fat Indian fish. When it comes to these things, no one is a better hooker than me, that I can tell you from now only.