CALCUTTA, OCTOBER 20: It’s a wedding Calcutta is going to remember. Although it's three months away, the guest list is already being prepared, invitation cards are ready and so is the menu for the feast. The bride is the city's new non-resident celebrity - the 33-year-old winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Jhumpa Lahiri.Among the special guests is the West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu who read her Interpreter of Maladies when he was admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in August. When Jhumpa Neelanjana Lahiri gets married to Alberto Vourvoulias, a journalist with Time on January 15, the family expects, apart from Basu, deputy chief minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya and writers such as Sunil Gangopadhyay. ``We are in constant touch with her and her parents and there will be more additions and deletions later,'' said Anusuya Sanyal, Jhumpa's aunt.The venue for the ceremony is Singhi Palace in south Calcutta and the caterer has been signed up. About 350 invitation cards designed by her maternal uncle Tushar Sanyal, a commercial artist, have been printed and sent to Rhode Island where Jhumpa's parents, Amar and Tapati Lahiri, live.``Though the marriage is slated for January 15, since we expect about 1,000 guests and mega publicity, we have already finalised quite a few things,'' said Anusuya. She has been told by Jhumpa's mother not to talk about the details.Said Mullica Sanyal, another aunt: ``Jhum is very shy and she is wary of facing the media when she is here for the wedding. We have been flooded with queries about the time of her arrival in India. But Jhum wants to be a quiet family affair with no publicity. But we are afraid that won't be the case.''The family says Alberto's family is excited about the ceremony which will be held according to Bengali Hindu tradition. ``In keeping with the Hindu tradition, Alberto's family will throw a reception following the marriage,'' said Mullica.Jhumpa's parents are scheduled to come to Calcutta by the last week of December to oversee the preparations. ``They will be here by December 26,'' Mullica said. ``And what we are scared of is that we will not get Jhumpa among us as much as we had before,'' she added.Ashim Lahiri, Jhumpa's uncle who stays at Tollygunge at the ancestral house of the author, also thinks so. ``Earlier whenever she came to Calcutta - the last time she came was in 1995 - we used to have long sessions of addas,'' Lahiri says. ``But now since she is a celebrity, we apprehend she won't have any time to spend with us.''
