Feasting On

JANUARY 2000 - It is great irony that it should have been Mian Sahib’s government (remember them?) which made sure that wedding feasts would be a thing of the past. If there was anything other than rank chaos which one associated with his rule, it was food, food and food. Even his worst critics, and there weren’t many because everyone was trying to climb on the band wagon, grudgingly admitted that when it came to the right rice or the finest sparrows, Mian Sahib was in a league of his own – not to be confused with his Muslim League which has been surging out on the streets clamouring for his release.

The stories were legendary. Aitezaz accompanied the Prime Minister on his 47th official and unofficial trip to China, undertaken one heard since Hong Kong and Macau fell on the way back home. Both were areas of keen interest to Mian Sahib although he had been well advised that the fine art of ‘batairs’ had not touched the mercenary souls of the Chinese. The official flight – and how many of those there were while the national airline limped and gurgled in its death throes, took off from ‘bloved’ Islamabad somewhere near the midnight hour. Aitezaz who had been staying with his family or friends, said he had dinner and then made his way to the airport where the royal party was boarding the flight, which cleared Pakistan air space as the country’s heavy weights settled in. He was shaken, not by unexpected turbulence, but the sight of liveried staff ferrying large soup bowls and in no time at all, the delegation was feeding like an army of hungry Mongols on the finest Nihari, Siri Payas and all the rest of that delightful cholesterol-be-damned culinary delights Mian’s royal kitchen was famous for. Aitezaz swears that he had been instructed by his queen, the much-wronged, much-maligned, much-tainted Ms Bhutto, to cooperate fully with the official party, but he says the sight of the sloshing bowl and slurping noise which overpowered the drone of the jet engines, was too much for him. As the party descended into snoring slumber and belches shook the interior, the plane winged its way to China.

Once in that great land, the official party line for Mian Sahib’s entourage was to go easy on the Chinese cuisine. This mystified the hosts no end and at the official banquet, as our lordships declined one course after another, the Chinese were beginning to get very uptight about this mass show of rank bad manners. What they did not know was that word had been circulated amongst the worthies that after all this nonsense, there was a real eating binge planned at the State Guest House, because the royal cooks had been flown in to give everyone a touch of home while away from home. Consequently at the end of the formal and tortuous official banquet and nonsense like that, the Mian’s ministers, advisers, friends and politicians quickly repaired to their residences, where the man, true to his word, had laid out a feast, the very sight of which would have knocked out most of Pakistan’s heart specialists. The official Chinese tour was suffered with great dignity by all concerned because the food was simply way below their grease-standards and it was with large and very audible sighs that the party made its way out of the People’s Republic and rushed to the more exciting sights of Hong Kong, where shopping, shopping and more shopping waited. Aitezaz swears he put on 10 pounds on the trip but I am sure he exaggerates.

There were so many stories that did the rounds in those days. A cabinet meeting quietly interrupted to ensure the right ‘Ras Malai’ was ordered, from the right shop in Rawalpindi. Other meetings similarly broken so that the ‘Shab Deg’ that was cooking was examined in the most professional manner and its contents checked minutely to see that the flavours and aromas were just right. Of course Ms Bhutto was not a patch on Mian Sahib in this department. There were horrific stories emanating from Islamabad and Larkana, where cookies was just about the tops and sometimes everyone was tossing back kilos of ‘kalay chanay’ since they are a hunger-killers and the Prime Minister was supposed to be dieting. Personally I think it was just a rumour floated by Mushahid Hussain – he was later the Minister for Information in case you cannot recall the name, to destabilize Ms Bhutto’s regime. Actually there was no need for the dis-information campaign since Ms Bhutto grew lighter and lighter in the head and heavier and heavier in the posterior. When she was bundled out, she was naturally an unbalanced mess as there ever was. Whether she actually cooked up a storm in her culinary jaunts, I do not know neither having met the great lady or ever having landed an invite to her do’s. One hears that unlike Mian Sahib, she was only into ice cream and that too not the ‘Chaman’ variety which Chacha Ji ran (and runs) with aplomb on Lahore’s Beadon Road. Whatever the truth may be, one thing is clear. Only Mian Sahib’s establishment served ‘Imli Pani’ which an informed Mian acolyte told me was the thing to kick up the taste buds in the most redundant stomach and fire the appetite leading to a feast that would be almost wicked if not positively decadent by the most bizarre Roman standards. He was probably right.

So what a twist of fortunes that Mian Sahib banned wedding feasts just as the man who knew the world’s finest whiskies and brandies, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, banned liquour. In both cases, the bans have worked to a point. Pakistanis still lay out the most elaborate feasts and while weddings are reduced to a joke with guests holding on to cups of thick chicken corn soup which cannot be sucked in without waking up half of Model Town and for which budgets don’t allow spoons, or the derelict sight of a bottle of Coca Cola wrapped in a tissue and still looking naked. As a nation of great enterprisers, people have worked their way around the problem. Engagement parties, ‘Nikahs’ and other ceremonies (numbering over a 128) are stealthily converted into what were once wedding parties. Only meant for the family or so the word is, they are actually a cover up for a good tuck in. However those who can neither afford the crippling expenses of the food orgies that charcterised all marriage functions, can breathe easy and send away their guests with 250 ml of 1000 calories running in their systems. And while Mr. Bhutto rests in eternal peace (hopefully), Ms Bhutto lectures away in the free world and sends us prophecies of doom on a regular basis and Mian Sahib languishes in jail far from the aromas of Gujranwala sparrows, one can only wonder what is it that General Musharraf will ban. I haven’t the faintest idea.