Dubai chocolate, expensive tomatoes, and Pakistan Idol: A taste of late-stage capitalism

It’s the golden age of consumption and the dark age of contentment.

In the consumerist chaos of modern Pakistan, we don’t just show love anymore — we buy it, carefully packaged, influencer-approved, and preferably imported. I wanted to get something special for my nieces and nephews who are TikTok obsessed. Labubu was a bit too rich for my mortgaged blood so I found the next best viral thing that I was sure the kids would get excited about: Dubai chocolate, the original Fix one.

I had found a 50-pound note in my travel fanny pack from a couple of years ago when I was hustling for donations after my standup comedy shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. This crisp British bill was going to buy adoration from my clan. Money really can buy a lot of things, including the label of being the ‘cool aunt’.

Dubai chocolate is an interesting viral phenomenon. When I first heard about it, I asked out of genuine curiosity without trying to be ignorant: “is it made from camel milk, is that what makes it Dubai chocolate?” All my life fancy chocolate was Belgian and Swiss. Now it’s anywhere with effective influencers. I felt like I’d been living under a rock.

At Dubai airport before boarding my flight to Islamabad, I found the coveted Fix chocolate store. One bar for around Rs5000. I got two. Why the hell not? It costs a million to just get out of Australia. What’s a bit more? As I coughed up the cash, I remembered as a child being excited just to be able to buy a Jubilee bar for Rs5. How times have changed.

The unwrapping of Dubai chocolate with my siblings and their children was an exciting event. The teens had their phones out and ready for reels that would be shared with their envious friends. My 7-year-old nephew ate so much that he puked. In short, it was a hit.

Once the excitement had subsided, I settled into the reality of life in Pakistan today. Sidebar: how you perceive reality in Pakistan mostly depends on how much money you have. The more you have, the better your experience. In my case, the experience could have been significantly better.

The curious case of the costly tomatoes

An overseas Pakistani friend had warned me I’d feel the pinch when I visited this time. I assumed she meant the usual — that Chen One bedroom sets now cost a small fortune. But the pinch came in unexpected places. Tomatoes suddenly felt like luxury items. I’d been anticipating worrying about the cost of original artwork in Pakistan. Turns out, I had to factor in the cost of everyday necessities, like most others.

Restaurants had adjusted how many slices of tomatoes they could add to a salad and the sabzi wallah explained why tomatoes couldn’t be stocked regularly anymore. “It’s the Torkham border. It’s closed.” And an even simpler explanation: “Floods”.

Tomatoes were in shortage but reels on shortage of tomatoes were in abundance. Crisis became content, generating income for some — maybe even enough to afford imported canned tomatoes for making marinara sauce to be had with pasta in the comfort of a dry living room, while the rain outside battered crops and other sentient beings without mercy.

Hitting the right notes (Pakistan Idol edition)

Amidst all this, there was the trusty distraction of 60-odd television stations, a quarter of which are dedicated to churning out a version of the same story involving family disputes, grand marriages and devastating divorces. As always on my visits to the motherland, I spent an obscene amount of time staring at the idiot box. It’s easier to escape with TV dramas than to be present with real life family drama.

During my channel surfs I discovered that Pakistan Idol was on. Now, I usually don’t care about the Idol franchise or any other talent show franchise really. But a show like Idol in a place like Pakistan symbolises defiance in the face of societal disapproval while paying homage to the rich musical tradition of the subcontinent. These aren’t nepo babies crooning semi-melodically. These are brilliant, talented and courageous aam (common) people who’ve dared to dream differently.

By the time my hometown, Peshawar, was featured during the auditions phase, the number of people qualified past auditions had already exceeded the original allotted spots because of the overwhelming amount of talent across the country. I’d sat there in front of the television in my mother’s room watching audition after audition, jaw dropped in awe. Pre-audition interviews revealed hopes of these young people who had a real chance at breaking through barriers of entrenched systemic inequality to grasp something precious that would lead them to what an average person living outside of a DHA colony desires: economic prosperity.

Young women spoke about family resistance that melted once they made it past the first round. Fathers stood before cameras explaining why they’d fought their own parents, their extended families, to let their daughters sing publicly. These were men of my generation giving their daughters access to opportunities that girls of my generation were mostly denied. Now that men from regular, shareef families were proudly backing their daughters in talent shows, suddenly it wasn’t so taboo anymore.

My own religious mother, now frail and old, asked me during one of these episodes: “You used to love singing didn’t you? Do you still sing?” I looked at her and said no. If only she’d asked me this when I’d been actually singing.

Welcome to late-stage capitalism!

Pakistan has always contained multitudes — staggering wealth and devastating poverty, rigid tradition and surprising defiance, sincere faith and thinly veiled hypocrisy.

But something about this visit felt different, sharper. Maybe it was the floods. Maybe it was new political tensions in a year that had already been marked with a war with a different neighbour. Maybe it was watching talent being packaged as economic opportunities. Maybe it was finding a Tim Hortons in Peshawar that catered to the rich instead of blue-collar workers in Canada. Maybe it was just seeing more clearly what had always been true: in late-stage capitalism, everything becomes negotiable when there’s money to be made.