Delhiwale: 250th birthday mubarak, Jane Austen!

Celebrating Jane Austen's legacy, a Delhi wedding reflects her themes of love and society, showcasing vibrant traditions and a hint of drama.

Let us be grateful to our scholars. They undertake the hard labour of analysing the joyful novels of Jane Austen through the probing lens of many isms—colonialism, feminism, etc. Their brainy chore helps us, readers, better understand our beloved writer. That said, all the six complete novels of the English novelist are essentially love stories, and each ends with at least one wedding. Yet, not a single novel gives a detailed description of the wedding. Today, the world is celebrating Jane Austen’s 250th birth anniversary, and one way to offer homage to the great novelist is by compensating for that perplexing gap in her books. Here’s a detailed account of a Delhi wedding, viewed through the sensibilities of a Jane Austen devotee.

Stern matrons were accompanied by daughters of marriageable age, attired in glittering costumes of silk and chiffon. (Mayank Austen Soofi)

One evening, this reporter was granted permission by an amiable hostess to enter the female-only section of a wedding assembly held in Old Delhi’s Daryaganj. The tent was very crowded. Stern matrons were accompanied by daughters of marriageable age, attired in glittering costumes of silk and chiffon. It was soon evident that an ornately coiffured woman named Lady Sabeeha enjoyed a position of consequence as the groom’s eldest sister. She was rumoured to have arrived straight from a beauty salon in Kucha Chelan.

Anyhow, it was the bride, her nose-ring of pure gold, who exuded an air of decided fashion. Her resplendent gharara commanded admiration, as well as a bit of envy, from the assembled women. So much so that Lady Sheema, who always starts her whispered conversations with “Promise me you won’t tell anybody,” took it upon herself to disclose to many unsolicited ears that the bride’s handsome dress had been designed by a jumna-paar boutique in Lakshmi Nagar.

The most esteemed presence in the assembly was without doubt Iffat Zarin, the Walled City’s only published woman poet. This erudite lady from Gali Hakimji Wali was looked upon with awe and admiration, obliging her to acknowledge the onlookers with grace and condescension.

The evening’s sole scandal centred around the wedding buffet when word spread in the party tent of a delay in the delivery of the milk-flavoured tandoori rotis from the bakery of Choudhary Mukhtar in Gali Chooriwallan. Although the rest of the food had arrived at the agreed-upon time from the kitchen of Bawarchi Muhammad Sikander in Mohalla Qabristan, the salty-tongued Ghazala Khala could not restrain herself from remarking at the “roti mismanagement”.

The tandoori rotis did finally arrive, and events proceeded smoothly from that point. Meanwhile, the faces of dulhan Fatima and her dulha Ahmad were aglow with perfect happiness.

PS: The photo is from a different Old Delhi wedding, snapped during another wedding season