Mohini's Intransigence
Mohini's Intransigence
A civil wedding followed by a Vedic ceremony could only be preceded by an exclusive sit-down dinner for the guests of Ms Mohini Gauba. She knew what she wanted and how! Gautam Anand gives us a taste of the meal that Delhi night.
Mohini Gauba, the younger daughter of Elizabeth Gauba (featured in our last column, as the Munich-born, Delhi-domiciled, famous educator and literati, married to an Indian engineer, Jivan Gauba), was adamant and surprisingly resolute.
Mohini's (largely) indecisive and tentative nature never failed to bemuse her mother. The former's Indo-German parentage had endowed her with a Kashmiri complexion and a heart of gold along with the innocence of a child, quite unlike the brusqueness of her father, the domineering traits of her mother, and the steely aloofness of her brother.
Mohini met her dream man in Jagat Persaud, a young Guyanese architecture exchange student of Indian origin. Jagat, the son of the Right Honourable Jagdeo Persaud, member of Guyanese Parliament, was an easy-going fine young man who enjoyed his ensembles. He was utterly in love with Mohini and showered her with much attention, something she had not experienced in her young life.
Jagat's ancestors (who had arrived to the then British Guyana), were from North India, specifically the Bhojpur and Awadh regions of the Hindi Belt. His father and grandfather, before him, were both influential community leaders. It is significant to add that the Indo-Guyanese are the largest ethnic group in Guyana, identified by the official census, about 40% of the population in 2012.
Mohini's determination to marry Jagat, and eventually move to Guyana, had stirred a great deal of anxiety for the ordinarily unflurried Elizabeth whose husband, Jivan, had never been a companion. He was an alpha male, pre-occupied and aloof, seldom seen or seldom heard, with infrequent bouts of affection reserved mostly for Mohini, his sister Satti Seth and letters that he painstakingly penned to his brother left behind in Lahore by choice; Kanhaiya, now known as Khwaja Latif.
Her anxiety had been further catalysed by her elder son, Ranjit, who had (literally) flown the coop after choosing to become an aviation pilot. Ranjit, a very tall Prussian-looking young gentleman who had an uncanny likeness to the Führer and even stranger, sported the moustache, known as Rotzbremse, or "snot brake".
But Mohini had it all planned, she wanted a civil wedding followed by a Vedic ceremony to be preceded by a seated dinner for 200 guests with the same menu as was served at her closest friend, Sushma's (the author's mother and a teacher at her mother's famous school) wedding dinner. She would wear a similar red and gold Benaras silk sari, and red rubies as wedding jewels, designed by a famous Parsi designer in Bombay.
The dinner would include, amongst other delicacies, Aloo Bukhara (dried plums) Koofteh, Morel Pulao, Wedding Pot Roast Chicken, Pepper Pot Chicken and the creamy pièce de résistance, pistachio kulfi.
The caterers were going to be the exclusive outer circle Central Plaza Hotel of Connaught Place. In deference to Jagat's home country, there would be a surprise Guyanese dish as well.
Our recipes thus are heirlooms from another era, unhurried, slow-cooked with mindfully-chosen ingredients, and served by gloved and turbaned bearers with pomp and circumstance at one of Lutyens New Delhi's verdant landscaped bungalows.
