IT was a little untraditional, Lata couldn't help thinking, that Pran hadn't ridden up to the gate on a white horse with a little nephew sitting in front of him and with the groom's party in tow to claim his bride; but then Prem Nivas was the groom's house after all. And no doubt if he had followed the convention, Arun would have found further cause for mockery. As it was, Lata found it difficult to imagine the lecturer on Elizabethan Drama under that veil of tuberoses. He was now placing a garland of dark red, heavily fragrant roses around her sister Savita's neck and Savita was doing the same to him. She looked lovely in her red-and-gold wedding sari, and quite subdued; Lata thought she might even have been crying. Her head was covered, and she looked down at the ground as her mother haddoubtless instructed her to do. It was not proper, even when she was putting the garland round his neck, that she should look full in the face of the man with whom she was to live her life.

The welcoming ceremony completed, bride and groom moved together to the middle of the garden, where a small platform, decorated with more white flowers and open to the auspicious stars, had been erected. Here the priests, one from each family, and Mrs Rupa Mehra and the parents of the groom sat around the small fire that would be the witness of their vows.

Mrs Rupa Mehra's brother, whom the family very rarely met, had earlier in the day taken charge of he bangle ceremony. Arun was annoyed that he had not been allowed to take charge of anything. He had suggested to his mother after the crisis brought on by his grandfather's inexplicableIt.

But it was too late for th VC j weddmg to Calcuttavo'ces rose to the skies and Quite drowned out the irrelevant it- at' and she would not hear ochant of the ceremonies.

Now that the exchange f t** Lata, however, stood close by and watched with an

Paid no great attention to f. ands was ver, the crowoattentive mixture of fascination and dismay. The two bare-

would go on for the better C aCf wedding rites. Thes chested priests, one very fat and one fairly thin, both

milled and chattered round h" 1 ^ ^Ur Wm*e the guest! apparently immune to the cold, were locked in mildly

laughed; they shook hand C fwjso^^rem Nivas. Thei insistent competition as to who knew a more elaborate

heads ; they coalesced into 1 "I r tnem to their fore- ^orm ^ the seryice- So, while the stars stayed their courses

women there; they warmed' ^ S' the men herertitt m order to keeP the auspicious time in abeyance, the

"lied clay stoves placed str * em!, es at the charcoal- Sanskrit wound interminably on. Even the groom's parents

while their frosted, gossip-lad ^'h* around the garden were asked ^ the fat Priest to rePeat something after him.

they admired the multicol ^n brath rose into the air' Mahesh Kapoor's eyebrows were quivering; he was about

Photographer as he murmured" s7 A ' ^ Smiled for * l WW hi rathef shrt fuse"

they breathed deeply the see f fl P ase! in English; Lata tried to imagine what Savita was thinking.

How

cooked spices; they exchanged h' L Wers and Perfume and cou^ sne nave agreed to get marriedwithout knowing this

tics and scandal under the h' i $ ^ deatns and poli- man? Kind-hearted and accommodating though she was,

at the back of the garden b"g ^coloured cloth canopy she did have views of her own. Lata loved her deeply and

rood had been laid out; the^* ,wmc^ 'ong tables of admired her generous, even temper; the evenness was

chairs with their plates full *A** ,own exhaustedly on certainly a contrast to her own erratic swings of mood.

Servants, some in white liv ^ tU in inexhaustibly. Savita was free from any vanity about her fresh and lovely

around fruit juice and tea a "dT' ff "^ '" knaki' Bought looks ; but didn't she rebel against the fact that Pran would

who were standing in the H ^ snacks to those fail the most lenient test of glamour ? Did Savita really

Jaddus, gulab-jamuns, barfis and , Samosas kachauris, accept that Mother knew best ? It was difficult to speak to

consumed and replenished al ga?a,f and ice-cream were Savita, or sometimes even to guess what she was thinking.

f vegetables. Friends who hH PU"S and Slx kinds Since Lata had Sone to college, it was Malati rather than

months fell upon each Qther na^ nt met each other for her sister who had become her confidante. And Malati, she

met only at weddings and fu l C"es' relatives who knew' would never have agreed to be married off in this

exchanged the latest news nf-j embraced tearfully and summary manner by all the mothers in the world

Lata' "rougiit " ^m '"

"-"nv i.v-wi,i a&amoi u, i^.i. mat i i^ii wuuiu who were standing in the A sn^ks to those fail the most lenient test of glamour ? Did Savita really laddus. p-nl'ik ; , _ garden: samosac !,! ir he was returning her affectionate look. It was too much.

Lata forgot that she had been defending Pran to Mala( just a short while ago, and began to discover things t( irritate herself with.

'Prem Nivas' for a start: the abode of love. An idioti^ name, thought Lata crossly, for this house of arrange! marriages. And a needlessly grandiloquent one: as if i were the centre of the universe and felt obliged to make i philosophical statement about it. And the scene, looked a. objectively, was absurd : seven living people, none of then stupid, sitting around a fire intoning a dead language thai only three of them understood. And yet, Lata thought, ha mind wandering from one thing to another, perhaps this little fire was indeed the centre of the universe. For here il burned, in the middle of this fragrant garden, itself in the heart of Pasand Bagh, the pleasantest locality of Brahmpur, which was the capital of the state of Purva Pradesh, which lay in the centre of the Gangetic plains, which was itself the heartland of India ... and so on through the galaxies to the outer limits of perception and knowledge.

The thought did not seem in. the kast trite to Lata; it VitVpea rier control her irritation at, indeed resentment of, Pran.

'Speak up ! Speak up ! If your mother had mumbled like you, we would never have got married.'

Mahesh Kapoor had turned impatiently towards his dumpy little wife, who became even more tongue- tied as a result.

Pran turned and smiled encouragingly at his mother, and quickly rose again in Lata's estimation.

Mahesh Kapoor frowned, but held his peace for a few minutes, after which he burst out, this time to the family priest :

'Is this mumbo-jumbo going to go on for ever ?' j

The priest said something soothing in Sanskrit, as if [

blessing Mahesh Kapoor, who felt obliged to lapse into an irked silence. He was irritated for several reasons, one of which was the distinct and unwelcome sight of his arch political rival, the Home Minister, deep in conversation with the large and venerable Chief Minister S.S. Sharma. What could they be plotting? he thought. My stupid wife insisted on inviting Agarwal because our daughters are friends, even though she knew it would sour things for me. And now the Chief Minister is talking to him as if no one else exists. And in my garden !

His other major irritation was directed at Mrs Rupa Mehra. Mahesh Kapoor, once he had taken over the arrangements, had set his heart on inviting a beautiful and renowned singer of ghazals to perform at Prem Nivas, as was the tradition whenever anyone in his family got married. But Mrs Rupa Mehra, though she was not even paying for the wedding, had put her foot down. She could not have 'that sort of person' singing love-lyrics at the wedding of her daughter. 'That sort of person' meant both a Muslim and a courtesan.

Mahesh Kapoor muffed his responses, and the priest repeated them gently.

'Yes, yes, go on, go on,' said Mahesh Kapoor. He glowered at the fire.

But now Savita was being given away by her mother with a handful of rose-petals, and all three women were in tears.

Really! thought Mahesh Kapoor. They'll douse the flames. He looked in exasperation at the main culprit, whose sobs were the most obstreperous.

But Mrs Rupa Mehra was not even bothering to tuck her handkerchief back into her blouse. Her eyes were red and her nose and cheeks were flushed with weeping. She was thinking back to her own wedding. The scent of 4711 eau-de-Cologne brought back unbearably happy memories of her late husband. Then she thought downwards one generation to her beloved Savita who would soon be walking around this fire with Pran to begin her own married life. May it be a longer one than mine, prayed MrsI

Rupa Mehra. May she wear this very sari to her owi daughter's wedding.

She also thought upwards a generation to he^fathei and this brought on a fresh gush of tears. What th septuagenarian radiologist Dr Kishen Chand Seth ha taJcen offence at, no one knew: probably something said o done by his friend Mahesh Kapoor, but quite possibly b] his own daughter; no one could tell for sure. Apart fron repudiating his duties as a host, he had chosen not even tr attend his granddaughter's wedding, and had gone furi ously off to Delhi 'for a conference of cardiologists', as ht claimed. He had taken with him the insufferable Parvati, his thirty-five-year-old second wife, who was ten yearsl younger than Mrs Rupa Mehra herself. f