The wedding of Varun Gandhi with Yamini took place on 6th March as scheduled at the temple in Varanasi. Feroze Varun Gandhi’s marriage to Yamini Roy Chowdhury who hails from Shantiniketan (West Bengal) remained the highlight of all the major dailies for more than a week preceding the wedding.
The wedding reception, which was to be held in Delhi on March 8, 2011 was called off on account of mourning the death of Varun’s grandmother Amteshwar Anand who was seventy seven years old. Maneka Gandhi deeply lamented the loss of her mother. Maneka apologized for the cancellation of the reception that was to be held on 8th March. The scintillating guest list of 1200 people included the top notch industrialists, actors, politicians and the who’s who in Delhi.
Yamini is a graduate from St. Stephen’s college in Delhi, and has pursued a course in fashion designing from France.The wedding took place on the sixth of March at Shankaracharya temple on Hanuman Ghat.in Varanasi. The no-frills marriage ceremony was done in a chaste Hindu manner. The bright and attractive blanket of 24,000 orange marigolds added to the beauty of the ambience in Varanasi. The bride graced the ceremony by wearing the same pink brocade Benarasi sari gifted by Indira Gandhi to Maneka Gandhi in 1974.
Varun married Yamini in front of 300 guests in the morning at seven thirty and this ceremony was flawlessly supervised by the Jayendra Saraswati. The wedding was special for a lot of other reasons. The traditional Shahnai during the ceremonies was played by none other than Ustad Ali Abbas (Bismillah Khan’s son-in-law).
The guests were served sweets like malaiyu, which are typical Benarasi sweets apart from fresh fruits and poha which came from the kitchen temple. The beefed up security and presence of the shutterbugs made it a media savvy wedding.
Priyanka Vadra could not attend the wedding on medical grounds and Rahul Gandhi, advised to rest since he fractured his leg some days ago, skipped attendance as well. Sonia had already told Varun that she would not be able to make it to Varanasi. The lack of any national leader at the wedding made it a close affair.
Now, what remains to be seen is if this Gandhi ‘Bahu’ will create ripples in the political circles of not? We should not forget that she joins the ranks of such as Indira Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and Maneka Gandhi – the three charismatic ladies who defined the role of women in Indian politics in the modern era.
