It is said that it is difficult to write satire in the true sense of the term as it is not easy to be critical without being insulting. The key is to point out the follies, vices, and shortcomings in a constructive and light-hearted way, which many writers have tried their hand at and succeeded.
Among these is Moni Mohsin, who seems to have excelled in the art of writing satire. She gained immense fame when her book Diary of a Social Butterfly hit the stands in 2008. Written in the form of diary, it is a compilation of her columns published in The Friday Times, where in a light comic style, she (through Butterfly) comments on serious situations including wars, the 9/11 incident, earthquake, emergency rule, Benazir’s assassination, the breakdown of law and order, cultural alienation between rich and poor, etc., and covered seven critical years in Pakistan’s history from 2001 to 2008. Though it was not her first book — the first being The End of Innocence — it brought her immense popularity.
The second book in the series, The Return of the Butterfly, which came out in 2014, comments on the country’s socio-political issues, such as the increasing Taliban threat and escalation of terrorism, economic downfall and Imran Khan’s growing political influence. The book manages to keep the reader engaged with the gossip and comments of Butterfly and her circle of friends who are more concerned with load-shedding, servants answering back, in-laws trying to upstage you, and the elections ka tamasha.
Mohsin’s new book Between You, Me and the Four Walls, the third in the Butterfly series was released in 2022, and follows the same pattern as the previous two with Butterfly as the protagonist and the narrator talking about the socio-political happenings and how they affect her.
Butterfly, the protagonist of the series, is a party-going, status conscious, shallow, pretentious socialite who loves gossiping and shopping. Through her comments on different topics she appears to be a woman who is opinionated though not well-read, who has a keen interest and instinct for what is right or wrong in politics, and loves to talk about different national and global geopolitical situations — from terror attacks and India’s action in Kashmir, to PTI dharna to domestic politics (in-laws, house help).
She lives in Lahore with her husband Janoo who is an Oxford graduate — whom she often refers to as Oxen — and owns vast measures of land, and her teenaged son Kulchoo. Her social life is frenetic — kitty parties, coffee meetings, get-togethers and zipping into London for a round of shopping and spending time in Dubai.
Like the earlier Butterfly books, Between You Me and the Four Walls is also structured in the form of short diary-like entries featuring Butterfly’s latest musings. Mohsin maintains the same style as in the previous books as if the narrator is talking to the reader directly. Along with the date, each entry mentions a major political or social development, which is followed by another event that plays a major role in Butterfly’s life and a source of social satire.
The book covers a period of eight years, from January 2014 till December 2021, during which a lot happened in the country and the world over. The entries include events that were in the news during this period, such as Malala winning the Nobel Prize, 350 military men killed in north Waziristan campaign, Dawn Leaks’ journalist placed on ECL, suspect arrested in the rape and murder of seven-year-old Zainab, clerics refusing to limit mosque gatherings despite increasing cases of Covid-19, gas shortages in Peshawar, Karachi, etc. The Covid-19 pandemic occupies an important place in the book as it restrains Butterfly from going to London for vacations which she is in the habit of.
Mohsin’s use of colloquial language and liberal use of Urdu words in between makes the reader cringe and laugh at the same time. Much of the fun emerges from her frequent use of Urdu words, such as tauba, tabahi, hai na, and vaghera. Butterfly’s style of speaking, misspellings which are due to false phonetic realisations of words, incorrect intonations, funny explanations, literal translations of idioms and proverbs, cute contractions, etc. all add flavour to the book.
When Butterfly uses terms like “slip into a comma” and have a “photogenic memory”, or that Malala is a “stool of the west” and refer to international art shows as “Venice Banal and Sydney Banal” it makes one pause for a moment, but then it you can understand that she is trying to sound like someone she clearly is not.
She loves naming to people around her. She likes to call Janoo’s younger sister, whose name is Qubra, Cobra as the woman is “slimy, slithery and poisonous”. Qubra’s husband is Shadaab, but Butterfly tells us that everyone calls him Shady, “pyaar say”; Butterfly refers to her mother-in-law as “The Old Bag”.
At the beginning of the book, when she is spending time in Dubai, she writes: “Life here, na, it’s tabahi. Na koi dust and na koi poors, and na koi smells and na koi flies and na koi in-laws, and na koi daakoos and na koi bombs and na koi gutters and na koi pot holes and na koi beggars. Everything is saaf suthra and so peaceful.” And when Janoo tells her that Dubai has no freedom and that she should try holding a protest to see what happens there, she says, “Am I crack that I want to do a juloos in jannat?” He tells her that they don’t even have elections. And she asks him, “Tau hum ko itni election kar kay kya mil gaya hai, tell?” Thinking of the mess our country is in, she seems so right.
Butterfly wants to know everything, even if she doesn’t understand what is being discussed. For instance, when her friend’s daughter Mimi is “talking loudly loudly about someone called Mittu” (Me too), she asks “Sweetie, who’s this Mittu? Someone I should be knowing?”
Despite the country being in the grips of terrorism, climate change, and the pandemic, the Butterfly is more concerned about the maalish waali, Meghan Markle’s tiara and the mechanics of ‘sad make-up’. Butterfly’s frank, funny diary entries show how it is in the private lives of the privileged. The political and economic turmoil in the country simply slide over gossip sessions with snobbish and pretentious friends regardless of whatever is going on around them.
For instance, when Hamid Mir is injured in a gun attack in Karachi, Butterfly is, for a minute relieved, “Honestly so glad that Janoo doesn’t come on TV and say things that he does at home, otherwise he would also be straight away in hospital raddled with bullet holes.” But when her son Kulchoo says “Now they are also trying to chup karo TV channels like Geo” all Butterfly can think of is her TV programmes: “Shut down Geo, Haw … tau how I will watch Mera Sultan? And my fave talent shows, baba? What will become of me?”
Despite some of her comments appearing frivolous they are quite apt and close to truth and what many might be thinking. For instance, when Butterfly chides Imran Khan about him complaining about privacy after divorcing Reham: “But if you ask me, I tau just don’t like Imran’s attitude, baba. So scizofrantic. On the one side he can’t live without a camera on top of him 24/7, and on the other, he says he wants privacy. When he got married, he … talked non-stop about why he married her and what his smooth sayer had to say vaghera vaghera until our ears pukkoed. Bhai, if you want privacy then don’t do all that tamasha, na. … get married chup chap say and go live your married life in your home. But problem with Imran is he is actually married to the camera, na.”
Similarly, after Qandeel Baloch’s murder people accusing her of ‘giving a bad name to our country’, elicits a very apt outburst from Janoo: “Home-grown terrorists who bomb playgrounds and gun down school children don’t give a bad name to our country. … That every other day minorities are lynched and murdered in broad daylight doesn’t give a bad name to our country. Yet a poor girl posting some mildly provocative videos of herself of social media in the forlorn hope of gathering bit of fame and fortune brings immense shame to our country? What sort of screwed up value system do you have, for God’s sake?”
When Covid hits, Butterfly’s social life receives a great blow, as she is not able to travel to London for her shopping sprees or to relax in Dubai. She hates being “locked up” because of Covid and when Janoo gives her a box of mask, she says, “are you joking? I’d rather die cuffing than go about looking like Hannibal Lecture from Silence of the Lamps.” But when she sneaks out to visit her friend and someone coughs in the lift she holds her breath and changes her mind and comes back home without meeting her friend, thinking “what if she also has karo na?” Once back home, she tears open the mask box and put on two at once.
Since Janoo does not allow her to visit the salon because of the pandemic, her hair is in a bad shape (as a socialite she is very particular about her appearance). At a coffee party on Zoom, she shows up in a bathrobe with her hair wrapped in a towel. She pretends she had forgotten the meeting, and tells her friends that she has just rushed out of the shower. But they catch her red-handed and ask about the make-up on her face. She says, “No, no, my face tau is naturally like this.” Of course, they cannot lose the opportunity to rub it in. One of them replies, “Acchha? Allah gave you maroon lips and turquoise eyelids?”
Mohsin, through her wit and satire, has once again proved that she has the ability to make the readers laugh at situations without undermining their gravity. In our part of the world where we are faced with tense situations day in and day out, it is important that we are able to laugh at our own follies yet not lose the essence of it.
Rizwana Naqvi is a freelance journalist and tweets @naqviriz; she can be reached at naqvi2012rizwana@hotmail.co.uk