I dream of a white Christmas

Christmas time takes me back to my childhood, when this holiday season used to be my most favourite of the year. It meant lots of new toys, candy, the magical moments of putting up a tree in school (I always wanted a fairy on top as opposed to a star), singing carols and in general, having fun. The best part was the street where I lived, on Princess Street in Edinburgh, Scotland, which would already be white but would always have a freshly fallen layer of snow. Pure snow. Pure virginal snow in the spirit of Christmas. I didn’t understand the fallacy then, I was only 6, but I think of it so often now. And I wish I could go back. Such a wonderful time – to be six without a care in the world – and that too at the best time of the year: Christmas Time. Eid, especially Bakra Eid with all gut and gore, could never replace Christmas.

This is how I remember it.

The most amazing smell of roasting chestnuts would waft around the street vendors, warming their hands over the fire. That and cinnamon. The very thought transports me back. There was always so much white against so much colour. Christmas trees decorated from top to bottom, large welcoming boxes resting at their feet, waiting to be opened. Despite ours being a Muslim home, I always got to do it all: hang stockings on the fireplace: red and white striped, they always meant more candy. We’d get a box of 12 Christmas crackers too, my brother and I, and looked forward to the tiny little toys that would fall out. I even went to Church and sang carols with the rest of my friends. Silent Night is the only one I still remember.
Christmas is when I learnt how to cut snowflake links out of white paper; they went up decorated with the silverest of glitter glue. It’s also when I learnt how to make a Christmas calender, the kind that opened a window each day with a count down to Xmas Eve. But I think the most important thing I learnt, and I realize it now, is the importance of tolerance, especially for other religions. Because if my parents didn’t have that tolerance I would not have the memories that have enriched this season for me. And even today, thirty years on, I can look back and feel as if I’m standing in the snow, looking up at the biggest tree around, feeling as if I’m 6 once again. It’s a good feeling.

Why are most women cows when it comes to dressing up?

Cows. Horses. Sheeps. Yes, sheeps not sheep. Sheeps as in bakriaan.

Women in Pakistan love to move in herds but why any sensible woman with half an ounce of style would want to look like the other half of town is beyond me. As a fashion journalist – and I’m sure anyone who is fond of dressing up would agree – a woman’s worst nightmare is stepping into a room and finding someone else wearing the same outfit as yours.

In Pakistan you don’t run that much of a risk with fashion labels because not enough of them go around, but the litmus test is always lawn season. You first bump into an aunt at Park Towers. She’s wearing the same Sana Safinaz print as the one you knew everyone would buy but picked up anyway. Then your tailor delightfully tells you that three other aunties (the ones who host the kitty/committee parties you just hate in every moment of snob superiority) who have given him the same for stitching (alongwith the brochure that you thought you had exclusive rights to). And then finally, when you go visiting, you see your best friend’s maid wearing the same print. A fake version that your friend picked up from Sunday Bazaar but the same print nevertheless. That’s when you know you should have resisted the impulse and stuck to the print less retailed.

I digress. Again…why are most women cows when it comes to dressing up? Most of them are so insecure in their skins that they’ll pick up the oh so popular leopard skin printed linen without thinking that combined with their blond hair they’ll end up looking like a feline on the prowl. Or worse, with due apology to all felines. Cows. Prints are one thing. The female species pushes the extreme when it comes to silhouettes…or hairdos. I’ll kill myself if I see another straight blow dry!

Patiala shalwars chhoti kameez. If I saw another size zero eighteen year old college girl wearing a Patiala shalwar with a kameez short enough to show her underwear, I swear I’d give her a wedgie with it. Y’know what girls? Want some style be original? Wear a t-shirt with a harem. But the Patiala was so last year anyway so who cares? We have other things to obsess over now.

Now is the grand era of the kaftan. Kaftans and ponchos. Ponchos and kaftans. Tents, as my husband calls them. “We can hold our sons wedding in one of yours,” he’s been telling me. But I’ve been wearing them for two years. Two years ago people around me (the ones in Patiala shalwars and chhoti kameezes) thought I had gone cuckoo. What the hell! They thought I had lost my marbles while inflating my entire wardrobe into a billowing marquee. But I indulged in my moments of dropped hemlines and flowing silhouettes. I loved every stitch of my Sonya Battlas and Maheen Karims. Until everyone started wearing them, that is. Eventually, two years later the tailors mastered the pattern and my friends, cousins, chaachis, tayees and even their maids said goodbye to darts and hello to kaftans. Time to change clothes.

Change, ladies change. And individuality.

“In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different,” said the great Coco Chanel.

And indeed, the key to having style is to be different not the same. Not everyone’s a trendsetter but everyone is different. God made every single human being different for a reason. Hell, He even made every single snow flake in the world different. Then why would women want to follow the herd mentality and dress for an assembly line. Are they really cows? Lining up for the greatest sacrifice of all: that of style! Thank God Eid is over.