Heading for Wedding

Did the couple consult the astrologers and had their horoscopes matched like all good (and bad) Asians do, asks Dr Saumya Balsari.

As Saturday approaches, the armchair cynic will recall a proverb or two: There's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip. All roads lead to Rome. The armchair optimist on the other hand, might warble Dinah Washington's "What a difference a day makes".

There is also the (only slightly) awkward matter of those two thousand commemorative tea towels carrying the right royal pair but the wrong royal wedding date. Benjamin Disraeli once said that "Everyone likes flattery, and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel". The problem is that it is not a trowel, but a towel. What a lot of fuss over a storm in a teacup! It all depends on how you use your tea towel, of course, but there must be ingenious ways of covering the date without covering the faces (unless you want to)?

The crucial question really, is why Clarence House did not consult an Asian wedding planner. It would have become abundantly clear that what the Queen and the rest of the world privately calls a "jinxed" wedding, is basically no-one's fault. The real culprits are the planets - this must be the handiwork of mischievous Shani, Rahu and Ketu, and the first task for the Prince's advisors would have been to propitiate them with the appropriate rituals. Sadly, this doesn't mean that all hurdles and obstacles would suddenly have vanished. The fault may lie elsewhere: did the couple consult the astrologers and have their horoscopes matched like all good (and bad) Asians do?

Still, leave it to an Asian wedding planner, and even rain on the day (and no marquee) becomes a joyous monsoon wedding in which the young groom and bride dance with sensual abandon. Or as in Bride and Prejudice, a bedecked Indian elephant could trundle slowly up the Mall with the royal pair undulating to its gait and the great British public could fling marigolds at the couple in adoration. Groom's parents missing the wedding? No problem. Rent-An-Asian-Parent Ltd. could take care of the minor glitch, and the actors would sob at all the (in)appropriate moments. There would be one minor problem, though - the bridal pair would be obliged to fall at the feet of gathered guests for their blessings. Royalty knows a thing or two about falling heads in history, not falling at feet.

A savvy Asian events organiser would never have ordered tea towels - free packets of bindis, perhaps - but not tea towels.

(Saumya Balsari is the author of the comic novel 'The Cambridge Curry Club', and wrote a play for Kali Theatre Company's Futures last year. She has worked as a freelance journalist in London, and is currently writing a second novel.)