Prologue
The invitation came on a Saturday morning, just in time to wreck my weekend. On stiff, crinkly-edged card it read:
Mr. and Mrs. Sudhir Kashyap
request the pleasure of the company of
Ananya and Varun
at the wedding of their daughter
Preeti
to Mr. Manav Gupta
at
The Inn by the Beck
on Saturday, 11th May, at 1:00 P.M.
RSVP
It wasn't that it came as a shock. When your sister's wedding date's been set, you don't have to wait for the invitation to find out. If you have a mother like mine, BT lines are buzzing instantly. She'd probably announced it in the Telegraph, the Manchester Evening News, and very possibly the South China Morning Post, too. For all I knew she might even have announced it on the Internet. In order not to be outdone by an arch-rival neighbor, Mum had recently acquired a little Toshiba laptop. As she'd said, if wretched Shreya Malhotra could understand the wretched things and have a wretched E-mail address to brag about, she had to keep her end up.
There had been an engagement bash, back in January. It felt like just a few weeks ago, but three months had whizzed by since then and I still hadn't sorted my life out. And if ever a party was thrown from mixed motives, it was Preeti's engagement bash. You only had to listen to my mother's remarks.
To Shreya Malhotra, the arch-rival neighbor, there was a barely concealed hint of up-yours: "Oh, yes, he whisked her off to Florence just last week"proposed right on the Ponte Vecchio"I suppose you've seen her ring?"
To neighbors she actually liked it was, "Well, of course Sudhir and I are delighted"he's doing terribly well and obviously besotted ..."
To me, while we were whipping satay sticks from the oven, it was a whispered, "... and I feel he'll be good for Preeti"nothing wishy-washy about him, if you know what I mean. Don't ever tell her I told you, but I always thought she'd end up with one of those wishy-washy boys she could never say no to. Daddy was afraid she'd end up with that Amit"a nice enough boy, of course, but not much use in a crisis, if you ask me. I won't tell you what Daddy called him"it was terribly rude."
There must have been forty-odd guests, which was not bad at short notice.