Two days ago, Cobra, Janoo’s younger sister, called early in the morning, screaming historically down the phone.

“War is starting,” she shrieked. “Modi is sending planes to bomb us. First, he’s going to stop our waters and then he’s going to bomb us. Thanks God, we have our full swimming pool, so at least we’ll be okay for water…”

Like the cheapsters that they are, she and her husband Shady went and had a huge pool put in last year, taking up half their garden. Neither of them swims, of course. Shady wears a wig to hide his gunj and he worries that it might float off in the pool, looking like a baby seal, doing breast stroke beside him.

Meanwhile, Cobra’s scared of water and is too ashamed of going in with a huge inflatable ring around her huge inflated stomach. And the daughter doesn’t swim because, she says, she doesn’t want to get a tan — how you can tan when you are already the colour of a baingan is a ripple to me. So, only the son uses the pool with his friends, but otherwise, it’s for one purpose and one purpose only: saarhoing me.

In a week of pool panic, nuclear chest-thumping and papal farewells, Butterfly tries........

© Dawn (Magazines)