“Gratitude is for tail-wagging dogs Humans know nothing of it Lending a hand or money, Never results in profit.”
From Cynics Hymnal Ed. by Bachchoo

Forgive me in advance dear reader for this “personal” column. Though Syria be racked by civil war and Europe face a monetary crisis and moment of decision as never before, my head, heart and mainly driving skills and hauling stamina have been devoted this last week to the wedding of my firstborn, my daughter Tamineh who will keep the Dhondy name.
W.H. Auden in a memorable poem observed that the painters of the Renaissance, proportioned the world by depicting scenes of horrible martyrdom or by having at the centre of their works some feat or miracle and placing it in the context of life and the landscape. A saint is flayed alive or Icarus falls from the sky. The saint’s followers observe the brutality and recoil in horror or sorrow. Yet at the edge of the painting some dog, oblivious of the great events taking place nearby, carries on its doggy existence, rubbing itself against a tree or eyeing a lamb to molest.
The world is what it is!
Now I can’t decide whether our family wedding was the centre of the picture with the European economists and Angela Merkel on the sidelines, oblivious of the events in a foreign field in Sussex, or whether my focus on the wedding is akin to the aforementioned doggy activities — Oh OK, I am being silly!
The centre and the periphery are in this case self-evident. It wasn’t a Monsoon Wedding. Very many people, the family, the sisters, the relatives who came from India, Bangkok and the US, all checked the weather forecasts to see what was in store for the great day. The world knows that the English weather is most unpredictable. What it gives in cloudless sunshine one moment it takes away with thunderous showers and tree-shaking winds the next.
Now that the Internet has weather sites which predict conditions weeks ahead, this weather-watching became an anxiety, not to mention a bore and a nuisance. We watched and prayed.
The weather was particularly important because Best Beloved and her betrothed had chosen to have the non-religious wedding ceremony in a spacious and rather beautiful centuries-old barn with a sloping roof and wooden rafters, deep in the Sussex countryside, 60 miles away from where they live in London.
Then the champagne was to be had on lawns and the wedding tea, a very recent addition to the list of revels, to be held in a marquee, a big white shamiana with rope-secured walls.
Their main concern were those guests — mainly the young who wanted to make a weekend of the wedding — who had been invited to bring tents and camp in the field adjacent to the tea and outdoor dinner meadows.
The last time I slept in a tent was when as a boy my Army officer father hauled us up to Kashmir where his regiment was stationed in the hills without permanent bivouacs. We lived in tents and suffered one of the dust storms that blows across the Udhampur hills. It put me off tent-life and the family rented a house in the nearest city of Brighton for the wedding days.
The point that ought to have emerged thus far is that for this generation of Brits, even very many of Indian origin, weddings are occasions they don’t rely on their parents to arrange.
Of course one has designated duties and pays a good part of the bills. I was asked to choose the wines and see they got from the warehouse to the wedding. Easy and up my street and so with the poems I chose for friends and family to read out.
And then, routinely, one had to give the bride away and make an appropriate speech.
I don’t have trouble with public speaking if I am at all familiar with the subject in hand and embarrassing anecdotes about my daughter are something I know a great deal about.
Even so, I thought I’d begin, after the welcoming clichés and saying that I was happy and manifesting the kind of pride that doesn’t come before a fall and which the Gods don’t punish, by telling the gathered guests an aspect of weddings as sometimes depicted in Bollywood.
As I recall they are always thought to be occasions for mixed emotions — happy and sad ones. Happy for the celebration and marking of a milestone in life and for the inauguration of a new partnership, and sad for leaving the house of daddy and mummy and going to live with strangers.
I recalled this tradition of sentiment as colourfully as I could and then told my audience that one of the sanctions against any behaviour by my children that I didn’t approve of was to threaten, when their friends came to the house, to recite in a very loud voice T.S. Eliot’s works distorted by inaccuracies and in an exaggerated Indian accent:
“Let us go then you and I
While evening is ishspreading all around the sky...”
It always worked. Though the children will collectively insist that I did carry out this sanction just for devilment, I can’t recall actually embarrassing them even once through this mechanism.
But the father’s speech was an opportunity not to be missed. I continued by announcing that I was going to sing a few lines to elucidate the Bollywood bride’s sentiment. I could hear a chorus of “No, please Dad!” from the daughters and my son and saw two of them holding their faces in disbelief.
I was undeterred. I sang in my best Mezzo-soprano:
“Chhod babul ka ghar
Mohey Pi ke nagar
Aaj Jaanaa padda
Oh-o-o Jaana padda!”
I translated the words and then added the fact that Tamineh has lived with her (now) husband in their own flat for a few years and besides I don’t own a house for her to leave.