paris hilton in karachi!!!

13Apr07

not really. just trying to generate some google hits.

there are a number of lousy things associated with coming from a family that traces its roots to the indian city of lucknow. like when you run into a dad’s cousin at a restaurant when you’re with friends and have to say “aadab!” as a form of greeting much to the amusement of your companions. like when you forget that the old fogeys call your dad by his first name (i come from a long line of mohammad x hussains) and tell off his uncle for calling three times in a row despite your stating clearly that there is no mohammad at this number. like realising – while your cousins are rolling on the floor in hysterics – that the guy who talks like a mughal emperor isn’t the cute distant relative’s dad but her husband. i could go on for hours…

there are also some unbeleivably amusing stories. the ones lifelong family jokes are made of. like the recent story of the guy who wouldn’t die.

my great grandfather had two wives. he probably could have had at least two more but he was a romantic at heart and well life was busy. he had to go to the mushairas and do the requisite kabootar bazee and waste a fortune and do all the stuff the nawabs of those days had to do to ensure that four generations later the family name would be loosely attached to auditors and programmers and textile people and the like. anyways, anyone who has ever watched that disgrace to tv, star plus, will tell you how two marriages make for rifts in the family. and so was the case with ours. well it wasn’t exactly a rift, it was like being on two sides of a deep treacherous ravine – or m a jinnah road, take your pick, they’re both impossible to cross – so contact with the distant (half?)-cousins isn’t exactly a daily process.

it was in this environment that the phone suddenly rang a few days ago to tell me that kamran bhai’s father had passed away. it took seven minutes of interrogation to actually figure out who this kamran dude is before i communicated the thing to my parents. so that evening, the  famous teen bhai (my dad and his two younger brothers) with sons in tow found their way to the funeral. and guess who they saw at the gate? kamran bhai’s father. a quick conference led us to conclude that it must have been kamran bhai’s uncle who had passed away and the condolence was just about to be extended when who shows up? kamran bhai’s uncle. my cousin and i quickly conferred and we decided that we both got it wrong it must have been kamran bhai himself who died. i was about to present this theory to the teen bhai when, you guessed it, kamran bhai shows up. this was very unnerving. i mean damn it all, you keep killing them off in your head and they keep showing up. i wish i’d thought it was anna nicole smith’s funeral…

having totally given up on our information, one of my uncles put it to the kamran bhai family – aakhir intiqaal hua kis ka hai??! so the guy goes “suleman bhai”. and a bunch of clueless faces stares back at him before someone says, “suleman bhai?”

this is someone that even the younger two of the the teen bhai had never heard about. and the last my own father had heard of him was like thirty years ago. but he didnt recall this untill after the poor guy was buried. imagine going through the entire funeral without knowing who’s being buried. only in desiland…

when we got home, there was even more hilarity. it seems the ladies had done the ghaibana namaz-e-janaza thing for kamran bhai’s dad and it was only after a hell of a lot of fun and joking that we found out that the poor guy was an estranged elder brother who no one had seen for the past three decades. i mean i feel sorry for him but i still can’t stop laughing at the comedy of errors caused by a misinterpreted phone call.

and the funeral was a hell of a lot more fun than the last wedding i was at. more on that later. my keyboard is hurting.

Filed under: desi-ism, the sweet stench of life   |  33 Comments