She wrote for Delhi people too.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Let us be grateful to our scholars. They undertake the hard labour of analysing the joyful novels of Jane Austen under the probing lens of very many isms—colonialism, feminism, etc. Their brainy chore helps us, readers, to 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 the detailed account of a Delhi wedding, viewed through the sensibilities of a Jane Austen devotee.

One evening, The Delhi Walla was granted permission by the 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 Kucha Chelan beauty saloon.

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 it to 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 of Iffat Zarin, the Walled City’s only published woman poet. This erudite lady from Gali Hakimji Wali was looked at with awe and admiration, obliging her to acknowledge the onlookers with grace and condescension.

The evening’s sole scandal centred around the wedding buffet. The 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 in 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 flawlessly from that point. Meanwhile, perfect happiness was aglow on the faces of dulhan Fatima and her dulha Ahmad.

250th birthday mubarak, dearest Jane Austen.

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