The Diary of a Pretty Young Thing

So here I am, it’s the weekend again, and I must make my plans for a roaring time. This summer has been a very trying time indeed; I couldn’t confess to anyone that I didn’t get my British visa, even though I wore my best Gucci suit and carried along my Prada handbag and had on my fave Manolos. I thought I looked very Carrie Bradshaw, surely the visa officer would recognize the international globe-trotter that I am. Unfortunately, after about six hours of standing in the sun waiting with all the other hopefuls, I looked more like one of those creatures that Sarah Michelle Gellar has to kill in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They subjected me to an undignified body search; it’s a good thing I’ve been working out so hard at the Club these days.

I smiled charmingly at the visa officer, he took one look at the photo in my passport (it was taken after an all-night bash at Chotu’s) and immediately stamped "Rejected" on my passport. I pouted and cried but the bugger didn’t even have me escorted out by some handsome British officers, the local SMS guards took me screaming and kicking back to my car. As Bridget Jones says, I could spend all my life waiting to die alone, but I choose not, and so here I am revving up for a fab weekend in Karachi. So there, Tony Blair!

First stop: Agha’s, where I must buy all my chi-chi accessories. All that Body Shop scrubbing and loofahing seems to be coming to some good because at last week’s Fez Night Monkey said I was looking fresher than ever. So it’s back to the cosmetics aisle where I picked up more of that Peppermint Foot Scrub - I know you’re only supposed to put it on your feet but I tried it on my face and it worked like magic! While I was there I saw Feroz and FaridV - such sweeties, they always promise to get me my Skimz milk from Denmark, it’s much better than the local stuff.

On to Nubile’s, where Sandy D took care of my hair, facial, pedicure, manicure, waxing, body bleaching, and filled me in on the local gossip. Apparently Saad has divorced his wife after he met a half-Brazilian, half-Pakistani dancer/archeology student during his six month training stint with the bank in London, and now he’s living with her in Islington (I think it’s an island near Ibiza but I’m not sure). Saad’s wife, Sara, got her own revenge by having an affair with the trainer at her gym. Actually I think she’s become rather pretentious, flinging off all these Madonna quotes about younger men and the satisfaction of finding yourself without the bonds of matrimony. I bet she writes that column in the Dawn, you know, the one that’s supposedly by SWOT ("Single Woman Over Thirty"). Ha! DWOF ("Divorced Woman Over Forty") would be closer to the truth.

Tonight’s do, a birthday bash for Habib M, at my fave restaurant in all of Karachi - Fujimama. I need something to wear, so I zip down to Kuku’s boutique, where she’s whipped up something for me that’s so fab and sexy I can’t keep my eyes off myself. I have to be sewn into it in the boutique and I’ll have to be cut out of it later - it’s a one-time only creation - but suffocation is worth it in the quest to look good. The bash doesn’t disappoint - everyone is there, Chinky, Monkey, Mini-Me, PC, M & J, and Babs. Actually I can’t stand Babs (they should really call her Flabs). She’s always bragging about her degree from Yale Law School and her fantastic job defending the rights of Muslim women in Detroit. OK, so some of us never got as far as the Ivy League, some of us only made it to Karachi University (and some of us took one look at the shuttle van and came right back), but you don’t have to rub it in our faces, you know.

We gorge ourselves on all the fantastic food - sushi, kappa maki, tekka makki, squid, and octopus. PC, who’s a bit of a wuss, only orders the chicken cutlet, saying he doesn’t trust Karachi’s seafood, and since the best sushi he’s ever had is at Nobu, anything less would spoil his palette (snob). We have a great time making fun of him, telling him that he probably fathered Boris Becker’s lovechild, as he chews placidly on his chicken katsu. Four hours later, he’s the one laughing at us as he drives us, retching and screaming, to the Aga Khan Hospital’s Emergency Ward with severe food poisoning. "I told you not to have prawns in the summer," he giggles, as we roll around on the floor of the waiting room in agony. I try to catch the eye of a few cute doctors but it’s not easy to look sexy when you’ve got hives breaking out all over your body.

But even this little mishap is worth it because I think I spotted Babra sneaking out of the plastic surgery ward at three am in the morning, probably gone in for her fifteenth facelift. Poor thing, doesn’t she realize that there’s no substitute for natural beauty? I mean look at people like Michelle Pfeiffer and Liz Hurley, who were just born that way. Either you have it or you don’t, I always say.

Someone who definitely has it is Arundhati Roy, whose lecture I went to hear on Sunday afternoon (Saturday was spent recovering in bed from the food disaster). Now that woman has it all: brains, beauty, and the Booker. I don’t even mind that she cut her hair super-short - it’s the gamine look and very in. You can tell she keeps up with her Vogue, so she wins my approval.

I’m ashamed to confess I never read her book, The God of All Things, but I was going through my anti-religion phase at the time (Is there a God? If so, did he really invent high heels to cause major back problems for women just to punish them for the downfall of man?) and though I saw the book at Liberty, I just couldn’t bring myself to buy it. That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy her lecture; on the contrary, I spent the whole time texting it all to Monkey, who was still ill from the blowfish that Mini-Me had dared him to eat at Fujimama’s the other night.

We were discussing her speech afterwards at Hippo’s get-together later that night. "Wasn’t it wonderful how she said if they sent a nuclear bomb over to Pakistan, she’d be here to receive it with us?" I said.

"Not me," snorted Hippo. "I’d be on the first plane out of here to London."

"Does that mean you got your visa?" I asked incredulously.

"No, I’m a British citizen, I don’t need a visa," he replied smugly. Damn! Damn! I thought to myself, taking a quick swig of my drink… and then I took a second look at Hippo, who, despite being thirty pounds overweight, is rich, single, and the only son of a textile magnate. Hmm… stay tuned to this column, folks! As the Aunties say, I might be able to tell you the good news soon!