Homebody Becomes Sadistic

Don’t get me wrong. I love my mum. But there’s nothing as satisfying, delicious and tickling than teasing her so mercilessly that she stops talking to me. 

My mother is a conservative sixty-something. Her name is Razia. She is the model of piety, getting up early to say her Tahajjaud, then Fajr. She proceeds to read the Quran and then has breakfast. After which she goes out gardening, tells me I need to lose weight and clean my closet and the soles of my feet, talks to her children on the phone and then says her afternoon prayers, followed by evening and night prayers.

But where there is such virtue, there is also naughtiness. I am convinced of it. This is my theory about her.

She has a crush, though she will never admit it, on Najam Sethi. She will giggle like a little girl every time he flashes a crooked smile at the camera and lets loose a sarcastic comment in Punjabi. Her heart goes pit-a-pat when she listens to Hamid Mir, Geo at night provides her with her daily dose of excitement.

So when my mother, with a tasbeeh in her hand snuggles in her favorite red blanket in anticipation of the mustachioed eye candy at night; she is shocked to see a geo parody of a song that goes: ‘Razia ghundon main phans gai – oy hoy oy hoy’ (translated roughly as Razia stuck amidst gangsters, haw hai haw hai!)

Ammi springs up as if someone has slandered her.

‘What is this? What nonsense? Why Razia? Why not another name?’

‘Haw Amma!’ I say, ‘Hamid Mir knows you like him. He and Najam Sethi like to think of themselves as gangsters. You should be flattered.’

‘Bite your tongue!’

‘Ooh, sexual metaphor!’

‘You need to get married! What fahaash baatain!’

But this jibe at my marital status will not stop me. I’m inspired. The amusement in me bubbles into ecstasy. I start a bhangra like the cartoons on the geo parody.

‘Ghundon main phas phas, Razia phas phas!’

‘Dhat! Look at you! How dare you make fun of your mother? You’ve become sadistic!’

“Razia badnaam hui, darling teray liye!”

“You are vulgar!”

“Well, better that than a lesbian, no Amma?”

Ammi recoils into resentful silence while I do a bhangra around the living room, crash into a table and fall down.

“Serves you right,” she says in a disapproving voice.

Well, yes it does. But oh, homebody is still grinning like an idiot as she signs off with this most immature of blogposts!
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… Razia Badnaam hui… oi hoi oi hoi ;)