There’s no place like home

Summer can be cruel in Lahore. Especially when it begins to sizzle and housewives begin to think that they can save up on gas bills by cooking chapatis on the walls instead of on the kitchen stove. This is the time of the year when I, short of any other excuse to dodge domestic drudgery, begin to consider the pros and cons of using the maika card — an eastern exclusive for women’s rights which is unparalleled by any western action front.

This also makes me ponder on the abject poverty of the English language which has no parallel to offer for concepts as powerful as a woman’s maika. The subcontinental woman’s most effective combat arsenal, the traditional maika is what probably keeps more marriages in working order locally than any constitutional draft. Additionally, it is that great leveller of the gender issue which all homemakers can and should make good use of in the face of domestic strife. And for this there could be no better time than summer. This card gives the average homemaker an edge over her spouse, especially when tempers begin to fray in direct proportion to the summer heat.

Of course my husband DZ has habitually countered the maika card by references to the Met office. Islamabad (from where my parents’ house has always beckoned me for summer sabbaticals), he has argued, is not much of a hill station; Margalla and Murree hill views notwithstanding. He calls them mere optical illusions, not really cool enough to make a trip to the capital worth its while. With Islamabad’s temperatures rising and shining in sizzling camaraderie with Lahore, he might have a point there but given my maika or, shall we say, the root connection with that city I have been loathe to accept defeat. For all its heat, heartlessness and its proverbial distance from the rest of the country, that city has always worked miracles for my summer morale … there has been a certain degree of comfort in  knowing that there still exists a home and hearth to which one can, if need be, escape for a sabbatical.

It makes me think of the two governments either side of Wagah as manifestations of the subcontinental bride — bashful yet brazen, given to threats about using the maika but ready all the while, to make peace.

At our house, which always takes on the ‘microcosm within the macrocosm’ sort of geopolitical relief in the event of any argument, the maika card became even more ominous at the turn of this century. That was when the family saw the emergence of another vote for the maika connection syndrome. When our son’s bride added to the demography charts in the family household in Lahore, there became two of us at the winning end every summer, since her parents also happened to be stationed in the capital. DZ, I guess, was not really thinking of this double vote for the capital when we reinvented the Islamabad connection courtesy our firstborn’s mother’s home. Which piece of singular good luck (as I saw it) caused the status quo to be doubly unsettled.  Dadi could have added to the numbers had she been a little more mandate-oriented, but she being of an age when the ‘root’ connection looses out on its charisma, simply ignored the whole reference.

DZ probably had no idea of the long term results when, so many years ago, he had launched his Islamabad offensive, bringing in his wake an entire Chenab Express-load of wedding party revellers to wed me. Neither would he have guessed then that history repeats itself. Firstborn, who 27 years later went to wed his betrothed in the very city that his father had taken on years ago, was just as naïve about the lethal prowess of the maika card. Good to see that in time he too saw the light of day and is now learning the ropes of handling the maika card with as much dignity as his father. Like father like son! Meanwhile, it is good to know that we have progressed in time and transportation. DZ’s retinue had had to travel from Multan to Islamabad by train — 24 hours of a jolting journey across the Punjab plains. Firstborn’s marriage-party lapped the miles across the M2 — which makes the maika even more potent! Game, anyone?

Published in The Express Tribune, July 24^th, 2010.