No crowd, crores at Pilot wedding

So, what happened to weddings in the style and, era of the Mulayams and Laloos? In the Pilots’ scheme of things, they are out of the window.

“The credibility of politicians has nosedived. They preach something and do just the opposite,” intones Pilot.“Here we wanted to set a standard: That weddings of politicians’ kids are private affairs, not a matter of social visibility.”

So, it turned out to be a punctual, un-rambunctious get-together: An 11.30am-to-2.30pm affair (only the vidai was late by half an hour) with no police, no traffic jams and just five tame gate-crashers who said they were not going to eat the food, just bless the children.

The most difficult of the wedding problems was making the invitees’ list. Pilot didn’t want a mela or a law-and-order problem on his hands. So, he had to trim it down. “I didn’t even invite Sonia Gandhi (his party chief) or President K R Narayanan though I went to their children’s wedding.” Yet, there is a downside to keeping the political world separate from your private world. As the newly-wedded Sarika, a mass communications graduate from St. Xaviers, Mumbai, says: “Some of these (her father’s political friends) are people you meet a few times but they make such an impact on your lives. And the messagethat probably came across was: Sorry, you are not close enough. But that was not the case.”

Sarika and Vishal (25) studied together, briefly, in an Air Force school during Class XI and XII. And they are both in agreement about the wedding being a closed and intimate affair. “Why invite the whole world? They don’t know me,” says Sarika, who is having a recurring bindi anxiety. Has it come off, she asks, as she clears a lock of hair from her face.

Her other worry is she doesn’t know how Vishal’s family will react to her speaking to the Press. “Vishal comes from a Naval background but leave them out of it. We don’t know how they will react.”

But, did Vishal fear it would get out of hand? “It was a very close affair, a bit tiring. And I knew that my father-in-law was not the kind to invite too many people,” he says, quietly. “There was little chance of people to just land up.” So, there were a lot of military chaps around, 15 to 16 generals with former air chief marshal Arjan Singh, whocommissioned Pilot in Oct 29, ’66, as one of the guests of honour.

Then, there were the gwalas with whom Pilot used to deliver milk and who had been invited from his native village of Vaidpura in Ghaziabad, a half-an-hour to 45-minute drive from Delhi.

The common factor in the list was that the invitees knew the children by name. The ambience was typically Rajasthani: Those from the bride’s side wore pink printed turbans; the boys’ side donned red ones teamed with kurta payjamas or sherwanis. The food stalls were thatched huts. There was no band, just shehnai and the only decorative item was cream-and-marigold flowers. The menu was traditional North Indian food: five to six dishes, including two varieties of desserts ice-cream and jalebi.

The only attention the baraat received at the gate was a busload of Japanese tourists who stopped to gape at the festivities and recorded it faithfully on their handycams.

There was no shamiana either so guests prayed in the night that it wouldn’t rain. Pilot’sbuddy A S Chawla, an A-I captain now, was less credulous and more enterprising: He called the AI office and got the weather forecast and then everybody slept in peace.

The wedding arrangements had been in the making since last month when the IAF buddies had got together: Sonney was coordinator, Chawla was the odd-job guy. But, Chawla defensively adds: “We didn’t send off anybody from the offices to run errands. We brought sweet ourselves, from Nathu’s in Bengali Market.”

They would like to say more about good buddy Pilot but there is the small matter of bills to be taken care of. The ex-IAF comrades start haggling about Shafi, who managed the catering for Kashmiri food.

And the newly-weds? Right now, they are keen on honeymooning Phuket. How many days? Keep it private, please.