Dip never encouraged Shirin or me to build a close connection with India. Her explanation when challenged by relatives was that she wanted to spare us a ‘confused identity’. I know she also felt strongly that as girls we would have a better life growing up in the West. I didn’t question the notion, but assumed it was linked to her unhappy first marriage and the obstacles she had faced finding her way.
Now, spending time with the family in India, I wonder if those obstacles still hold young women back. In this short time, I can’t possibly form a definitive view, but with help from my family I hope to get some sense of a woman’s experience.
At the start of my quest, when researching Partition, my cousin Geeta directed me to a ground-breaking book by Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence. Listening to ordinary people speak about Partition, Butalia wrote, she became aware of a silence around the experience of women. She listened for histories that hovered at the edges of those that they told. Seventy-five thousand women were raped and abducted on both sides of the border. Much of their torment – being paraded naked or mutilated – targeted the men to whom they were thought to belong. Some such experiences entered the silence. Others were woven into accounts of martyrdom.
A brick well has been built in Amritsar’s Partition Museum. It remembers women, hundreds of them, who leapt or were thrown to their deaths to escape ‘defilement’. Butalia recorded many such accounts. A man killed his daughter by slicing off her head with his kirpan. He then ‘martyred’ twenty-five others. In the village of Thoa Khalsa in Rawalpindi, ninety Sikh women from one family were killed to preserve their honour. Male survivors praised their bravery, but the voices of the women were lost. ‘The lines between choice and coercion,’ Butalia reflected, ‘must have been blurred.’
In the mayhem of Partition, women were taken from villages, trains, kafilas (foot convoys) and camps. Often their abductors were people they knew well, local officials, the police or soldiers whose duty it was to protect them. Distraught families reported to the authorities that these women were missing.
The prime ministers of India and Pakistan met in Lahore to discuss recovering the abducted and, in December 1947, they concluded a treaty. Since violence in the Punjab had started in March 1947, they decided, any woman living with a man of the ‘other’ religion after this date would be presumed to have been taken by force. Conversions to the ‘other’ religion after March 1947 wouldn’t be recognised.
Each community was told to hand over the abducted, in exchange for the return of their own women. Voluntary surrender was supplemented by official ‘rescue operations’, involving social workers and the police. Sometimes they stormed homes and rounded up women. Under the agreement, the wishes of the women were irrelevant. Many protested. They did not wish to be ‘recovered’.
Gandhi and Nehru both issued appeals for women to be welcomed home. Pamphlets were circulated drawing on the story of Sita’s abduction by the demon-king Ravana, and how she remained ‘pure’ despite the time spent away from her husband, Ram. The Indian Constituent Assembly picked up this theme. Members declared that ‘as descendants of Ram, we have to bring back every Sita that is alive’. Very quickly, recovery became about the honour of the nation and its men.
Officially, recovery operations continued for nine years, although in fact they tailed off after a few. Thirty thousand women were recovered. Their views had been discounted, it was said, because they could not make a true choice in a ‘situation of oppression’. But Butalia pointed out that most Indian women, even in their ‘own’ families, were seldom able to voice their opinion or make a choice. There was another irony, she wrote. India, a nation founded on the principle of secularism – equal respect for all religions – defined the natural and rightful place for women in purely religious terms. Hindu and Sikh women belonged in India, and Muslim women in Pakistan.
‘India,’ Dip always said, ‘is a country of contradictions.’ The ‘recovered’ women were denied a voice. At the same time, a number of women in newly independent India held prominent roles in public life.
One of these women appears in the Canadian film, Revolution by Consent. To me, Dip is indisputably its star. To Dip, the star is an older woman. A woman who sits, head covered, her handsome face framed by the floral border of her white sari, speaking with authority about measures to combat discrimination against ‘untouchables’. Rajkumari Amrit Kaur was the first Health Minister of Independent India and a role model for a generation of young Indian women. Amrit Kaur was a graduate of the Freedom movement and close confidante of the Mahatma. Her Sikh grandfather converted to Christianity. They were an aristocratic family who placed a high value on education.
Sarojini Naidu was another influential freedom fighter (and poet and writer) whom Dip admired. She joined Gandhi on the Salt March and at the second Round Table Conference in London. She had an inter-caste, inter-regional marriage and became the first Indian female President of Congress.
Next on Dip’s list is Vijay Laxmi Pandit, Jawaharlal Nehru’s sister, who was also active in the Independence movement and imprisoned as a result. In 1947 she worked in riot-torn Delhi before taking up her position as India’s ambassador to the Soviet Union and head of its UN delegation. In 1973, when her niece Indira suspended the Constitution and declared an emergency, she was a fierce critic, as was her daughter, the novelist, Nayantara Sahgal.
All these women were privileged. Amrit Kaur was educated at Oxford. Sarojini Naidu studied at Cambridge and King’s College, London. Having received a top-notch education, these women co-founded, with the Viceroy’s wife, Lady Irwin College, where Dip studied in the late 1940s. Dip never knew this, and I am pleased to share some of my new-found knowledge with her. This prompts a discussion about Papa-ji’s commitment to her and her sisters’ education. Dip sees Gandhi’s influence in this, and suggests I look up something he said about judging a society by the way it treats women.
In the 1920s and 30s, Gandhi called on women to leave their homes and join the struggle for political freedom. In this way his aim of mass participation was achieved. Just as war in Europe saw women flock to the factories, in India the Independence movement brought women out of their homes and onto the streets. But Gandhi was never an advocate for formal education. Far from it. In his view an education, literacy even, only had value if it could be put to practical effect. A spiritual education was superior.
In fact, Dr Ambedkar (and his wife) were the great champions of women’s education. And it was Ambedkar who said: ‘I measure the progress of community by the degree of progress which women have achieved. Let every girl who marries stand by her husband, claim to be his friend and his equal and refuse to be his slave. I am sure if you follow this advice you will bring honour and glory to yourselves.’
The Sikhs should also get credit. Gender equality is a founding principle of the faith. In educating his daughters, Papa-ji took this to heart.
In 2018 Theo and I were looking forward to our trip to Jaipur to attend the acclaimed Literary Festival when an elderly relative rang. He had heard reports about violent protests. Even a school bus was attacked. So he suggested we shouldn’t, after all, take the train. What was it about, we asked? He had trouble explaining.
It had to do with Padmavati, a Rajput queen who was said to have set herself on fire rather than risk capture by an invading Sultan. Padmavati appears in an epic poem written by a Sufi mystic in the sixteenth century. For having resisted the lustful Muslim, she became a symbol of Rajput female honour and purity.
So what’s this got to do with the train? Someone decided to make a film about Padmavati and this upset a number of people. Accusers (who hadn’t seen the film) claimed there was a love scene between the Rajput queen and the Muslim invader. The film set was trashed, shooting disrupted and the lead actress and director were threatened. Four BJP state ministers banned its screening (not having seen the film either). Some of the worst disruption was in Rajasthan.
In the event, the train to Jaipur ran fine, but at the Lit Fest the saga was hotly debated. The Supreme Court had ruled that the constitutional right of free speech justified the film’s release. But many cinema owners, although legally entitled to show it, were intimidated by threatened violence, so it stayed off their screens.
I drew a clutch of conclusions from this curious episode. In public life, emotion often trumps reason and the state has a tendency to cave in to the mob. It also seems that in India defending female sexual ‘honour’ (izzat) has not lost its potency.
Later, I settled down to watch three documentary films made by a friend of my nephew, Kabir. In roughly equal measure, her films have been admired and condemned. Their titles will give you a clue. Silent Screams – India’s Fight against Rape, Undercover Asia: Girls for Sale and Freedom to Love. The latter is a searing film about murder. In the twenty-first century, father will kill daughter and brother will slaughter sister, to control whom they love, claiming it’s a question of ‘honour’. Mothers collude, actively or by their silence.
What about opportunities? How do the choices available to young women of our demographic, the privileged, educated few, compare to those in the West? In my family I notice a pretty wide range.
Anjali is married to Jaisal, my nephew. Together they run SUJÁN, a chain of sumptuous safari camps and a palace hotel. They also run a conglomerate of companies manufacturing automotive systems that Anjali inherited from her father. Her parents are Punjabis who fled Lahore at Partition.
We met in London for a drink after Anjali had presided over a Board of Directors’ meeting in Stuttgart. She had also attended a suppliers conference in Barcelona where she was the only woman in a room of three hundred men. When I asked, Anjali told me Indian society remained deeply patriarchal, but she didn’t seem especially eager to elaborate. In response to some questions I sent to both Jaisal and Anjali, Jaisal helpfully replied, ‘While being a woman in such a scenario might be challenging, she does not view it as an issue.’
Aishwarya is married to another of my nephews, Kabir, and together they run The Shop, a successful textile business that they took over from Pami. Aishwarya is from Kerala in the south. Her views are refreshing and reflect a different experience. One evening in their Sujan Singh Park garden, we discussed a recent Supreme Court ruling that a temple in the south (Sabarimala) had acted unlawfully in refusing entry to women of menstruating age. When activists from Delhi turned up, this sparked protest and counter-protest.
Aishwarya felt it was a local issue that Keralites should be allowed to sort out. When the centre interferes, she said, it usually makes matters worse. Kabir disagreed and passionately defended the women’s constitutional right to equality.
Aishwarya explained later that, in her view, the BJP-run centre was deliberately trying to incite communal strife in a state that had historically been free of it.
Kerala, she said, with its diverse population – 55 per cent Hindu, 26 per cent Muslim and 18 per cent Christian – was a harmonious, well-functioning, women’s rights-promoting state in which the BJP had never won a seat. The communist state government was well able to supervise enforcement of the court’s ruling without ‘help’ from outside.
After bagging a degree in Politics and International Studies from Warwick University, my niece Nandita decided to enter the law. She showed me around Bombay High Court, brimming with passion and pride. Beneath a quiet exterior, she is witty and sharp. She joined a firm, clerked with a Supreme Court judge and worked her way up.
Then she got married to a brilliant medic and started a family.
As we chatted I held her new-born son in my arms. His skin was distractingly soft and his fingers absurdly minute. ‘There is social pressure to be a good stay-at-home mother,’ she told me. ‘You are constantly reminded you are not the bread-winner and women are not “required” to work.’ Pressure to stay at home also stems from the fact, she says, that the men don’t usually share domestic burdens and chores.
After her first son was born, Nandita’s parents, Raji and Nikki, encouraged her to go back to work. ‘My mother was my strongest advocate,’ said Nandita. ‘She felt I would be a happier person and better mother if I pursued my dreams.’ Nikki, a beautiful, bright woman, married at nineteen and never herself pursued a career. Nikki and Kanika (former banker, married to Anand), as well as the servants, help look after Nandita’s children while she’s at work. ‘Being professionals (doctors) my husband and his family are unfamiliar with the concept of stay-at-home mothers! So I got lucky.’
Nandita says she is still building her career as a junior counsel. But her dream is to become a judge. She is burning with idealism. And patriotism. She speaks about delivering justice to the people, being fair, equitable and in touch with one’s conscience. She recognises the awesome responsibility of being a judge.
‘The need of the hour is for strong, rational, independent-thinking people to be in decision-making positions.’ She wants to make a difference and be part of the huge change that she feels India needs.
I asked how she has found returning to work as a mother.
‘I feel taken more seriously,’ she said. ‘It may be that the change is from within – that I have matured and am more productive. But it does seem like the men in my field recognise that although I have my plate full at home, I am able to do what they do, at their pace, and I still survive! India is changing – and about time!’
On one of my trips to India, the #MeToo movement bursts into the open. A prominent journalist-turned-politician – M.J. Akbar – was accused of sexual harassment. He immediately sued his accuser for libel.
In discussion later about the #MeToo developments I detected some disappointment among women who’d hoped for meaningful change. One told me, ‘It hasn’t been possible to hold people to account and things have slipped back. Unfortunately, it descended into trial by social media.’ A friend of my cousin, whose husband faced anonymous online accusations, confirmed this. She then added, ‘But Indian men are terrible.’ It is true that a woman in India is felt up a lot.
One niece has no truck with #MeToo. ‘There are women with no voice at all who get raped. Educated women should be able to tell men to Fuck Off.’ Unsurprisingly, there’s a wide range of views among my female relatives about the lot of Indian women, opportunity and patriarchy. But there is broad agreement that in India girls still ‘matter less’.
On one issue I found there was total consensus. All said that they didn’t feel safe out on the streets at night. Abroad, in London or New York, they will walk home or take public transport. Take public transport in India? Not a chance. It’s not a big problem for them. They all have drivers. But they are quick to point out there is a whole other experience for the less privileged. The majority, they say, don’t have a choice. They take their chances out on the streets, on the metro or bus.
On 16 December 2012, a young 23-year-old woman went to the cinema to see Life of Pi. She was studying to be a physiotherapist, and was on her way home to South Delhi where she lived with her parents. She boarded a ‘bus’ with a male friend. She was gang-raped and sexually butchered while her friend was beaten. Her attackers threw her off the bus, naked, and left her to die by the side of the road. She held on a few days, but her internal injuries were too severe and she died, despite being transferred by the authorities to a specialist hospital in Singapore.
In Delhi, for the first time ever, thousands of women took to the streets to express their sorrow and anger. Anger about rampant sexual violence, about the attitudes that lead to these crimes and the failure of the state to protect them.
The young woman’s name is well-known, but in India she is referred to as Nirbhaya (meaning fearless). Some argue this is to comply with a law protecting rape victims from stigma, but many see it as perpetuating patriarchal attitudes. In December 2015 the young woman’s mother publicly named her, protesting that it was the offenders who should be ashamed. She called for her daughter’s name to be used, but the fear of litigation maintains a culture of silence and the mother’s plea is largely ignored.
Maja Daruwala is a campaigner. At the Literary Festival in Kasauli, a panellist had pulled out, so she took the human rights session alone. It was a challenging slot. The topic was important but not entertaining. She spoke powerfully about shortcomings in the police. Numbers are low, she said, equipment is poor and they lack the skills to secure a crime scene or collect forensic evidence. When it comes to sexual offences, they too often fail to even register a reported complaint.
A state agency has shown itself unable to protect half the population, she declared. ‘This has not created the kind of anger it should.’ As she prepared to leave the podium, she added, ‘We live on this foundation of injustice and are not sufficiently worried.’ I nodded vigorously, scribbling notes. Then I looked around. She was right. I didn’t detect anger. The crowd was comfortable and elderly. She described a world outside their experience.
It is now late afternoon. The sun has moved away from the seats in the festival tent and the air has a bite. I’m in chappals and my toes are starting to throb.
Three young women are on stage. They have each broken with tradition – religious, cultural, caste – to escape their immediate surroundings and reach for a better future. They are not used to speaking in public and their voices are soft. I then realise I can’t hear them at all. There is a kerfuffle to the right of the stage. Surrounded by flunkies and camera crew, a man – clearly a politician – strides to take his place in the front row, ready to join the next panel. His posse is loud. The audience shift and crane their necks in order to see. The young women on stage never manage to reconnect with the crowd. Gender, status, power – it’s too much to compete with.
My cousin Geeta studied with the feminist writer Urvashi Butalia and arranges for us to speak. I attended her lecture in the India International Centre and joined her afterwards in the smokers’ corner (it was just like being in Sussex with Dip!). The issue of violence, she said, although very real, is eclipsed by the many recent improvements in women’s rights, such as the abolition of dowry and greater participation in public life.
Women are visible in jobs that were previously not open to them – as drivers on the metro, in bars. Change has been rapid and economic development has blurred the boundary between the village and city. Millions come looking for work. Over the internet young people are exposed to things for the first time. There is excitement, confusion and violence. But at least people are speaking, she said, about sexuality, impunity, gay rights. ‘Five years ago you could not get a lesbian Indian woman to write about her experience.’
She directed me to a number of websites. The Ladies Finger was irreverent and bold. Its content is anonymous but liberating.
In Dip’s day, ‘love’ matches were rare. Her siblings’ marriages were all arranged. ‘Some,’ she says, ‘were happier than others.’
Anup’s husband, Jagtar, died tragically early. Some years ago, Anup’s film-maker granddaughter Sanjna asked on camera about her arranged marriage. ‘Semi-arranged,’ Anup corrected, narrowing her eyes with a twinkly smile. ‘He treated me like a princess. In life you need a little give and take. If you make a serious effort you can be happy. It is all in your hands.’
The marriages of the next generation – my cousins – were mostly arranged, to spouses who were Sikh. (Exceptions include Magda, Mala and Nayan.) But the reverse is true of my nieces and nephews. Most met their spouses at school or college or they are a close friend’s brother or sister. Sikh spouses are the minority. In my family autonomy and choice are squeezing out tradition and familial duty. But not completely. The arranged marriage still has a place.
My nephew Anand explained. ‘We confuse arranged marriages with forced marriages. The latter is dangerous, the former is an offline dating app run by your parents.’
I asked my nieces and nephews which they thought was more likely to succeed, an arranged or a love marriage. The question was slightly tongue in cheek but the answers were not. My niece, Amba, has a daughter and teaches in Brooklyn. She is divorced from her husband. An arranged marriage, she declared, has much more chance of success! ‘With love marriages there are high expectations. When you marry people that are culturally different from you it gets complicated when you have children.’
Anand pointed out that the marriage of his parents – Raji and Nikki – was arranged and they are still together after thirty-five years. Some of his friends who made ‘love’ matches are already divorced. ‘This,’ he observed, ‘has more to do with how intolerant, inconsiderate and selfish we are becoming as human beings than the mode of meeting your partner.’ I could not disagree.
My niece Aarti and her charming husband, Karanjit, live in a traditional ‘joint family’. This meant that, after their marriage, Aarti moved from Bombay to Delhi to live with her husband and in-laws. I can see this arrangement has much to commend it. There was no ‘making-do’ in scruffy surroundings as the couple found their feet. They moved immediately into a stylish house with the run of a beautiful farm just outside the city. The grandparents were always on hand to help with the boys, organise parties and take over when Aarti fell sick. Of course, there are trade-offs, like privacy and being fully in charge of your home. But for a young woman who herself grew up in a joint family, those may be at less of a premium. It also helps that the family she married into is loving and kind.
For what Dip calls the ‘well-to-do’, the burden of domestic life is enormously eased by having servants. Bei-ji grasped this in 1962 when Dip left India for the West. It is still true today.
After I had children, I organised domestic help beyond the reach of most in the UK. For sixteen years Nicola looked after my four children while I was at work. For nearly twenty years, Luz handled the house. But this is light-touch compared with my family in India. There, each child would have Nicola all to themselves. She (their ayah) will work weekends and weekdays. She will not clock off at seven. Someone will clean and do the laundry. There will also be a cook, a mundu (cook’s helper), a driver and a clutch of others to shop, serve at the table, garden, walk the dog, etc.
Some servants become an institution. Every morning Anup’s driver Taufeek would take her out for a walk. When she became wheelchair-bound, he lifted her gently into the car (with no manual lifting training, I am sure). His devotion prompted Raji to joke he must be her ‘real son’. Taufeek has been good to me too – picking me up from the airport and hauling my bags into the boot. Admittedly, other Cuffe Parade servants get a less enthusiastic press. I was told one chases the maids; another drains the wi-fi, watching porn. But their families are looked after. Medical bills are paid and their children are sent to school. It was like that in Papa-ji’s household in Sargodha, and in most of my family’s houses. Anup paid to educate Shiva’s four sons. One became a manager in the President Hotel, the others are policemen or work on the railways. As a result domestic service generally lasts just one generation.
Times are changing in any event. The employment relationship is becoming more formal. Nandita says young people don’t talk about ‘servants’. They speak of ‘the help’. They don’t shout like their elders and the help are no longer expected to be on hand 24/7. Their hours are fixed, as are their holidays. In some households, the change will take time. One cousin likes his food to be served, so the servants (as they’re still called there) walk around the table offering dishes. His son would rather serve himself from dishes placed on the table. The servants/help do their best to please both.
In advance of their wedding, Karam and Nitya agreed to discuss their engagement with me. For both, work was always an important part of their lives. Nitya was educated in Delhi, then spent a year at the London School of Fashion. She joined her parents’ garment export business before setting up her own label. Karam studied in Mumbai, Chicago and Paris. He has worked in London, Luxembourg and now lives and works in Mumbai.
I am speculating that marriage wasn’t a priority, but a time came when their parents started to fidget, so the young people agreed to consider having a marriage ‘arranged’. I have lots of time for my nephew. When his mother asks him to do something, he does it promptly and willingly (in my book an excellent character trait). He is also bright, articulate and interesting, though socially I’d say he is shy.
Karam and Nitya each rejected a handful of previous suitors, but liked the sound of each other. Being Sikh, I’m told, was not a requirement, but it was an advantage – to both sides. Nitya’s family, like ours, had also come over from what is now Pakistan.
When the couple met at Nitya’s parents’ home in Delhi, Karam’s mother (Rano) and sister (Aarti) came too. Then Karam and Nitya went for dinner together. After that they met many times and did things on their own.
It seems to me Anand is right. How is this so different from internet dating, which everyone here seems to be doing? You hook up online. You message, test the water a bit, then meet and see what you feel. I suppose one obvious difference is that the pool is small when a marriage is arranged, and terrifyingly (exhilaratingly?) huge when you date online. It is fishing in a garden goldfish pond as compared with the Indian Ocean. I figured, with family involved, the chance of inadvertently hooking up with a psycho might be reduced, but Geeta says the statistics on marital rape and wife-beating in India don’t support this.
There is no hint of that with Karam and Nitya, I hasten to add. From our discussions, both seem committed to family and to a partnership of equals. Although Nitya ran her own business, she lived with her parents until marriage (standard in this milieu), as did Karam. As newlyweds they will live in Cuffe Parade in Bombay, with Kamal and Rano, and see how it goes.
Coming together this way plainly involves particular pressures. A wide circle of people is invested in your decision and can’t help imposing a time frame. You have now met a number of times. Is it yes or is it no? How much more time do you need? Does that mean you aren’t keen? I can’t imagine it’s easy. Perhaps some decisions, like marrying, are always a leap of faith, a shot in the dark where you just hope for the best.
If a wedding lasts three days, there are bound to be a number of highs. Especially if it is March, in India, and you are a London resident who hasn’t felt warm sun since October. So it was when Karam and Nitya got married.
Our flight landed at 7 a.m. We threw on party clothes at Jaisal and Anjali’s, then set off for the henna ceremony known as the mehndi.
As we stepped out of the car at a club in Gurgaon, a family contingent hurried over (among them my sister and niece), dressed to the nines, arms outstretched in welcome. What could be nicer? I wished Dip were with us, and Milo, who, travelling from the Middle East, had been stuck in Abu Dhabi airport for twenty-four hours after Pakistan closed its airspace. This was tied up with the terrorist attack in Pulwama that killed forty Indian troops, prompting India to launch retaliatory airstrikes over Pakistan.
There was nothing more I could do to help Milo, but I could help drink the champagne and eat the exquisite, mouth-watering food at the mehndi. While the girls had their hands painted with henna, I joined a group of the uninhibited (inebriated?) dancing to Punjabi songs on the lawn.
Milo arrived in time for the sangeet (massive party) the following evening. There was a downpour of rain, but no one was fussed. We were in Friends Colony under an enormous striped canopy, a rainbow-like riot of colour: green, red, purple, yellow and more. I could see Rano’s hand in the meticulous table decorations and spotted mini brocade bags we’d bought in Chandni Chowk some months before.
My family and I wore the smartest outfits and jewellery we owned, but still we looked underdressed. Our haul of gold was frankly pathetic, and pretty much anything that sparkled on us was fake. No matter! It is always like this at such occasions and it did nothing to mar our enjoyment. Nitya and Karam glided about looking relaxed as they chatted amiably to four hundred people. Then the evening disappeared on the dance floor. Rock, pop, Bollywood classics, punctuated by an occasional Punjabi song when rhythmic movement shifted up from the hips to the hands and the shoulders.
The next morning, for the wedding ceremony itself, there were some delicate heads, but spirits were high. We had come to a large open lawn decorated with elaborate flower displays. The first event was the milni to celebrate the alliance between the families. The couple’s fathers garlanded each other and hugged. Then, in descending order of age, the remaining males from each family did the same, a pair at a time.
The bride arrived under a floral canopy held by her brothers (one actual brother plus cousins). She looked stunning in a traditional red Punjabi lehnga, hand-embroidered with raised metallic coils – a technique known as dabka. Karam was in a dashing white sherwani coat with churidar pajama and a red turban.
After fortifying ourselves with dhosas and tea, we filed into a hall also decorated with flowers. We positioned ourselves on floor cushions near to where the action would be – by the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib. Prayers were sung. Nitya’s father wrapped a ceremonial scarf, the palla, around Karam’s shoulders and gave the other end to his daughter, to signify she was now in his care. Karam led them around the Guru Granth Sahib four times, holding the palla, while the priest recited verses. The first was about duty to the family and community, the rest about the union between the couple.
I liked that there was action amid the music and verse. I liked that the couple’s family were involved and provided support – Nitya’s brother stood close, helping her sit down and stand. This harks back, I was told, to the days of child marriage, but is still needed as wedding lehngas are incredibly heavy.
At the reception there was cuisine from all over the world – dim sum, sushi, dhosas, Bombay street food, pasta and chips. It was a global crowd too. Some of Nitya’s family live in London. There was a German family, originally business associates of my uncle Jagtar, and Karam’s INSEAD friends, who seemed to represent every continent. But there was a notable absence. The Pakistani contingent were missing. The family who were saved at Partition and helped to travel to Lahore. They had all attended Aarti’s wedding, but relations between India and Pakistan were at such a low ebb that visas were impossible to get.
In the evening at Jaisal and Anjali’s we changed out of what Dip used to call ‘glad-rags’. In the upstairs study Jaisal put on the news. Cameras were trained on the Indo–Pak border where Radcliffe drew his unpopular line. In response to India’s airstrikes after the Pulwama attack, the Pakistanis shot down a plane and captured a pilot. They had promised to release him, that evening, at the Wagah–Attari border.
A little later than expected, the pilot appeared. He was safe and returned home, but it was obvious from the rhetoric – from the press and politicians – that there would be retribution. After being re-elected prime minister, Modi revoked Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status, ensuring that the dispute over this spectacular, ill-fated place remains a festering wound.