Happy New Year’s everyone. I thought this was going to be the year of diamonds and rubies for me, but Kulchoo tells me this is the year of the horse. I told him, “Sorry beta, I think so you’re hellocinating because I haven’t taken up riding, okay? Nor am I planning to become a tangay wala.”

He said that not everything was about me (imagine!) and that he was just referring to the Chinese calendar, which says that 2026 is the year of the horse. Apparently, where everyone else gives numbers to years, Chinese loag give animals. And also, apparently, they haven’t started this just now only, but they’ve been doing it for longer than even Asha Bhosle has been alive. And so, everyone is born in the year of some animal.

“So, tell, what is my animal, Kulchoo shweetoo?” I asked. “Let me Google it,” he said. “Hmm, let’s see. Right, turns out you’re a rat.”

“A rat?” I shrieked. “Are you crack? I can’t be a rat. I’m either a swan or a cheetah.”

“Nope! You’re a rat. Your birth year was the year of the rat. Unless you’ve given me the wrong year. You are forty…”

If bhooka nanga greedy types can just walk in and take countries, what’s stopping the rest of us from claiming our in-laws’ corner plots?

“Chup!” I said, sticking my fingers in my ears. “We are not going there.”

“But rats are inventive and clever and resourceful…”

“Bus!” I said. “Go do your homework.” Honestly, why does anyone have children? And then, despite of myself, I asked, “And what are you and your father?”

“He’s a tiger and I’m a rabbit.”

“Lo! Taking nice, nice things for yourselves and making me a rat.”

“It’s not personal.”

“In any case, I’m not from Who Haan or Sin Kang that I should listen to all this nonsense. Haan.”

Vaisay, this horsey year has turned out to be full of maar kuttai and larrhna larrhaana. Apparently, lawyers have beaten up a YouTuber in a Karachi court for doing blasphemy and then they beat up an SHO for taking down the case of the same YouTuber, when he filed a complaint. And enraged Indian football fans have beaten up chairs and banners and posters in a stadium in Calcutta because they couldn’t see Messy after paying to see him and Indian aam peoples beat up Japanese tourists in Varanasi because they were wearing Santa hats and they didn’t want to see them.

And Saudi Arabia and UAE are beating each other up in Yemen and Sudan, and Trump wants to beat Venezuelans and Green Lands and take their oils and minerals and Russians are, tau, beating up Ukrainians anyways and khair, don’t make me open my mouth about munhoos Israel. Only calm person in the world is me. I tau haven’t even beaten an egg.

And people are not just beating each other up, they are also walking into each other’s homes and taking whatever they like. Now look at Trump in Venezuela. Like this, tau, I can also walk into my sister-in-law Cobra’s corner plot house in Defence tomorrow and say, kay bhai, you keep it so filthy dirty, I think so I should just take it over because I can keep it so much nicer.

And like Trump has taken Maduro, I can also take her cook, Hameed, who makes to-die-for parathas, and keep him prisoner in my home and say kay he was doing too much chori at Cobra’s and he’s better off under my care.

I can also do same with Sunny and help myself to her pearl set and her husband’s Mercedes and also her Filipina. I can take her garden also, with all its foreign kay erotic flowers and oval swimming pool. But I’m not doing because, luckily for all of them, I am a khaata peeta, rich-from-behind khandani type and not a bhooka nanga greedy type like Trump.

If the year has started like this, tau God knows how it will end. I’m tau very worried, bhai. Because you know, na, that not everyone is as civilised as me. Actually, I think so if I’m an animal, I’m a surkhaab. Kulchoo and his father can both be rats. Haan. Barray aaye…

Many years ago, @monimohsinofficial, novelist and journalist, outed herself as The Social Butterfly

Published in Dawn, January 11th, 2026

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