When there’s little else to talk on the floor of the house, our lawmakers, out of sheer boredom, take to sanctimonious chatter. Women and their affairs make a nice topic for spice and all things not-so-nice.

Recently, Senator Enver Baig, a PPP agent provocateur of sorts, pointed a finger at the foreign secretary’s wife. Baig stands out in the Senate with his jaunty ties matching suits that flash oversized lapels often in white and a side parting that starts way down from his one ear straddling across his huge forehead and ending at the other ear. He alleged that Susan R Johnson alias Mrs Riaz Mohammad Khan could be “leaking classified information to the US” courtesy her spouse, the foreign secretary. Now such a charge may stick if the lady in mention happened to be headquartered in Islamabad. But currently living in Washington and holding an important office at the State Department, by no stretch of the imagination or vice versa squeezing thousands of nautical miles between Islamabad and Washington, can one conclude that sensitive information from the hubby to the wife gets passed on.

Yes, I know you don’t need to be physically together for such an intimate act. The Internet is the surrogate. Still, such an allegation is a wild card. Furthermore, I don’t think the good-hearted senator knows that his leader Ms Bhutto is a fan of the foreign secretary and as prime minister she favoured Riaz with plum postings abroad.

As I read the Dawn news story, washed-out childhood memories of all the memsahibs caused a traffic jam in my sensory system. Names of notables since long dead scooped up. More than half-a-century ago, I was too young to understand why a man called Mohammad Ali Bogra suddenly became a buzz at the morning-tea ritual at our home. Father had to bear Mother’s harangue on second marriages and that too with memsahibs in frocks. Prime Minister Bogra had caused a storm in APWA’s teacup and mother along other begums at APWA (All Pakistan Women’s Association) came out in the street to protest when they discovered that their beloved patron Mrs Bogra had been scrapped as the first lady by her husband, who replaced her with a trophy wife named her Aliya.

The match was made not in heaven, but in the Pakistan embassy in Washington where Mr Bogra was our ambassador before becoming Pakistan’s prime minister. While giving dictation to his secretary, Bogra fell madly in love with her and the two married secretly. I don’t remember exactly the date of their marriage but all I remember is that when the news got out, all the women in the town rushed to Mrs Bogra (I forget her name) hugged her tight and cried their hearts out in sympathy.

The APWA women boycotted the new first lady and never forgave the prime minister. They refused to attend any government event where the newly-minted Mrs Bogra was invited.

So traumatised were the begums that they vowed to disallow men sneaking off to marry second wives without the permission of their first wives. They carried a family law ordinance to President Ayub Khan with his daughter, the lovely Nasim Aurangzeb (herself a 2nd wife) heading the procession. They got Ayub Khan to sign the bill.

My timeline about our VVIPs marrying memsahibs is a bit out. But why go far – APWA’s founder-in-chief, Begum Raana Liaquat Ali, herself was a Christian nurse who married the first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan and lived to serve women’s cause for decades going about in her signature gharara and diaphanous dupattas.

Then there was Nahid Iskander Mirza, an Iranian lady who fell in love with President Iskander Mirza while married to the Iranian military attaché in Pakistan. We have in our family archives rare photos of Nahid Mirza in western dress. She never changed to Pakistani wear.

Vicky Noon, another foreign wife of another Pakistan’s Prime Minister Firoz Khan Noon was an institution. They met in London where Firoz Khan Noon was the high commissioner. As was expected, they fell in love and married. Earlier the Austrian-born Viki had married an Indian named Rikh. He died soon after their marriage. Two years before Pakistan was born, Firoz Khan Noon was knighted and Vicky became Lady Viqarunnissa Noon.

I remember her warm smiling face with freckles and red flaming hair. Ambition and beauty were her hallmarks. She captained the Pakistan Red Cross for full 20 years. She also founded the Viqarunnissa Girls school and college in Rawalpindi and was president of the Social Welfare Council of West Pakistan. In 1959, she was awarded Pakistan's highest civilian award, the Nishan-i-Imtiaz.

Reading a vintage article in Time Magazine dated Sept 5, 1960 titled ‘The mating of East and West’ the writer explains how Pakistani women passed ‘catty’ remarks about ‘imported brides’ saying that ‘foreign girls capture our men by going out with them and spending weekends in the country.’ The article continues: “To Pakistan officialdom, these charges were no laughing matter. In response to the cascade of letters, Pakistan's government let it be known that it henceforth planned to enforce a long-ignored rule which requires Pakistani diplomats to submit their resignation if they intend to marry foreigners. It was also pondering a new rule that would bar from assignments abroad the high percentage (24 out of 159) of Pakistani Foreign Service officers already wed to foreigners.”

The above stats although 47 years-too-late could spice up Senator Baig’s demarche on memsahibs and the number that turned out to be spies!