After six years of being dormant, the Butterfly is back. Moni Mohsin’s latest book, Between You, Me and the Four Walls: The Social Butterfly Bulletin, is out. Coming after the pandemic-induced lockdown, the third instalment of the ‘Social Butterfly’ chronicles is deliciously binge-worthy and worth the wait.
Mohsin, 59, broke the rules by using humour to sketch out Pakistan. The Butterfly first flashed her wings and her wit in the 1990s through Mohsin’s columns in the Friday Times. In 2008, it finally became a book, written like a diary. And there has been no stopping since. “I have come to know the Butterfly very intimately. And sometimes I feel that she has subsumed me,” says Mohsin over Zoom from London. “But my point is that once you create a character, you begin to see the world through their eyes.”
With her voice, wit and her politics, Mohsin chose a different way to represent the Lahore she knew intimately. “Humour helps hugely,’’ she says. “You can critique society through humour much more effectively. It breaks down barriers of self-defence. I am not saying that I can change society. It is not a writer’s responsibility to tell people how to live. The responsibility of a writer is to hold up a mirror.”
The diary finds space for a little bit of the mirror Mohsin is famous for holding up. “We are terrorists”, but in America, “they are lone gunman”. “We have had to fight against that,’’ she says. “Although we have those things happening, Butterfly is concerned about her nail polish or her hair colour. Just because Pakistan has an economic problem or India is in the grip of hindutva, or just because there are devastating floods, it does not mean that life doesn’t go on. There is still a girl waiting for her boyfriend to call her. There is still a man wondering how to phrase his resignation letter without burning bridges. In the west, they think these things do not happen here, but they do. It is everyday life. And everyday life is what gives potency and credit.”
It is just the ordinary details of a privileged elite that the Butterfly is―battling her mother-in-law, handling her husband, Janoo, and dealing with her best friend, Mulloo, who has now moved to Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf and calls the former prime minister ‘Khan sahib’. There is Covid, there is the rising violence against Christians, there is travelling to Mumbai, meeting Shobhaa De and staying on Shah Rukh Khan’s “backside’’ and even “Mittu’’ (the MeToo movement) that make the Butterfly’s view irresistible.
The Butterfly also has a few political points to make. 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 (rally) in jannat (heaven)?” He tells her that they don’t even have elections. And she asks him what Pakistan got with all their elections.
But it is more than just politics. The Butterfly tackles feminism as well. “I do believe that the world has changed, fundamentally,’’ she says. “Some people call these, you know, identity politics or woke wars or culture wars, or whatever, but they have happened. They have even penetrated the very privileged.” Then, on an Instagram post, she complains that her husband has become a mansplainer. “Women have become conscious of the fact that men constantly speak over them,’’ she says. And when a friend’s niece “doing a love marriage” is told that marriage is a walk in the park, she responds, “Yes... Jurassic Park.”
Grab it.
Between You, Me & the Four Walls
By Moni Mohsin
Published by Penguin India
Pages 222 Price Rs299