Dirty Lawn-dry.

Lawn, early spring, in terms of priority, takes precedence over most other things in the Pakistani woman’s life. These include the sanity of their male counterparts, household responsibilities and the general rules of etiquette and social norms bred into them from birth. An exhibition sees the classiest of auntis don Wonder Woman/Maula Jutt personas. Their behavior ranges from excited to positively, strait jacket-requiring deranged.

And it’s not just the clothes, lawn and lady hunting have started going together hand in hand. Lawn is the obvious reason for attending an exhibition. As for the latter, well, rishta auntis have termed these exhibitions to be good hunting grounds for fresh, single and available meat, rich/financially sound too, considering the exorbitant prices the clothes cost, and the perceived  ability and tendency to buy a dozen in a go.

True story, at the Sana Safinaz exhibition at the Expo Centre last week, women were so uncouth that the designers themselves spoke against the behavior of their clients, while implying there will be no more exhibitions, atleast by their label in Karachi. Kudos Karachi auntis. Now do the same at Al Karam, Gul Ahmed and JJ, let’s rid our city of this menace for good.

Women jumping and fighting to get to their prints is pretty tame. This particular exhibition saw a woman hit the cashier with her slipper because he apparently took too long in the bathroom and she had to wait to get her precious prints. Yes, shoe flinging, previously reserved for problems of Bush and Zardari magnitudes, now used to treat cashiers who take their sweet time in the loo. Another woman had an official by the throat because the print she was in line for finished by the time she got to the reception desk. Telephonic conversations overheard include a woman telling her husband she couldn’t do lunch for him that day because she was at the exhibition, another arguing with someone (who may safely be assumed to be her harassed hubby) to let her stay an hour longer after all her flight to Islamabad was a full hour and a half later that day, and she got the blessed prints she wanted.  A woman, who wanted to get out of line in order to make an exit and pick up her kids had to make a show of tearing up her tokens before the ladies let her pass through, just in case the sneaky creature was trying to get ahead in the queue.

The side it brings out in women and the traffic jams in the city aside, another major peeve I have about lawn is the fact that 13 year olds wear the same prints as 25 and 45 or even 65 year olds. What happened to dressing your age? Are all these big floral patterns and fussy laces really meant for young girls? Few things more abhorrent than the current trend of 14 year olds caked in makeup, raccoon eyed and pasty faced, with their hair fried in chemicals, does one really need to add to that with lawn? Being 21, yours truly thinks twice every time she’s face to face with these colorful creations because she is one of the Lord's vertically deprived creatures. And then you put 13 years olds in them, isn’t puberty already awkward enough?

Further, these outfits are NOT cheap. Also, about a hundred other ladies will have the same outfit, and for the next month, wherever you go, at least six other ladies will be wearing the same print as you, in the same color. Why would you put your (or your dads/husbands) wallet through that ordeal and then have another half a dozen women clad similarly?

As for lawn and I, once upon a time, life was beautiful. Lawn exhibitions were a time for me, along with my cousin Omair, to be sitting in coffee shops within close proximity of the mad houses, making fun of the ladies inside, which included our mothers, aunts and grandmother. We’d eat, Omair wouldn't let me pay the bill (a flawed habit of his I vow to change) and wait for the rest of our party.

Now stay on that horse and don't let me
see you around these parts again.

Like all other good things, my spell of blessed detachment from the ordeal ended. And just mine at that, now that Omair goes to work, he is fully exempted from this tribulation. On the other hand,  my family(the ladies) decided that it is an abominable hitch in my character that I hate shopping, lawn leaves me cold and the bit of common sense I announce  when I say it’s just clothes, well, that’s down right sacrilegious. I must be dragged along whenever they get their hands on me.

So, since my protests count naught against the determined majority in my family this year, I implore to all those who can make it happen, by whatever means, make bombing threats if you have to, stop the damn exhibitions!