Heard The One About The Oral Office?

For those who feel compelled to stay behind and eat, however, Bill Clintons not the only saving grace: Sonia Gandhis pronunciation provides room for comment between the malai-koftas and dum-aloo. And since Delhi is being kept busy burping between wedding feasts and restaurant launches, it cant, honestly, be expected to go vote as well.

Where there are weddings, can anniversaries be far behind? These days, an anniversary celebration is more opulent than the marriage that preceded it because, in these uncertain times, who knows whether next years occasion will mark ones bondage or freedom from matrimony.

Last week we were invited for a bash: the kind where married people like to see how other married people have held out. It recorded the fourteenth anniversary of our hosts though, our hostess confided, it should really have been the eighteenth.

 

Seems they met in college in India, went overseas for professional training, and then moved in together. I asked him why we should have two of everything, when one would do just as well? she says. It was logic designed to appeal, and so the deed was done, though the parents werent told. Implicit, somewhere, was the commitment to marry, but which deed had to await their return back to India four years later.

The ceremony turned into the usual hoopla once relatives got into the act. Tut-tut, they muttered, poring over horoscopes, the groom had two marriages posted by the powers-that-be-above. Hes still my man, argued the bride. Whyever not, she was told at least if thats what Tathastu means he can get married a day earlier, and then marry you the next. But Ill be his second wife, she shrieked. Its the way God intended it to be, child, they said.

The first bride was a surahi, an earthern pitcher, that the groom in his suit and tie wed with appropriate ceremony, promising to care for her till death do us apart. The next day, having drowned his day-old bride in the Yamuna, the groom arrived at the next wedding pandal without having shed a tear for the recently departed. He seemed more put out at having had to change a tyre on the way. At the end of the ceremony, he felt the shlokas he had repeated had a familiar ring. Just dont get too used to them, his bride warned him, adding for good measure, And dont forget, youve shown me how to handle the competition too.

The competition hasnt muscled in: a second marriage, after all, is fine, but wouldnt a third be a bit much? After all, Bill Clintons not having a ball of it either, at least for now, which reminds me: Do you know what his aides say when they fix Clintons appointments? Dont forget, the Presidents always laid!