To Cut a Long Story Short

On an overcast wintry morning in the posh, upmarket colony of Shanti Niketan in Delhi, as the sun feebly tried to impose itself on the reluctantly wakening city, the Azizi household was already abuzz with activity.

Their eldest daughter was getting married.

At last.

Salma was an imperious beauty, an established clinical psychiatrist, the first born of the four Azizi siblings and very much the apple of her father’s eye. Her steadfast refusal to get married even while her younger siblings all settled down had been extremely vexatious for Mrs Azizi and in the last couple of years even had the doting Mr Azizi deeply concerned – but all that was behind them now as she had capitulated a few months ago; and Mrs Azizi, to her eternal relief, had discovered that there were many eligible Muslim South Asian men still looking for a bride in her thirties.

The sprawling mansion was overflowing with relatives. Family retainers were serving breakfast and ferrying copious amounts of sweet tea to the rooms as the elders finished their fajr prayers. The teenagers had had been forced to renew their family ties by being bundled together in two adjoining rooms, from where the strains of good-natured disputes over toilets could be heard, along with loudly inappropriate music.

Mrs Azizi was on the phone, volubly giving conflicting instructions to her driver, who had been despatched to the airport to pick up her youngest sister’s family from Dubai. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the hubbub, which was compounded by the sound of sawing from the neighbour’s garden.

Their new neighbours were cutting down the old peepul tree to make way for swings for their three rambunctious toddlers. They had moved in recently after the lady had inherited the house from her distinguished uncle and the previous owner, the rugged Colonel Randhawa, who had tragically died on a peace keeping mission in Africa. Their lively, outgoing family was a quite a sharp contrast to the Colonel’s very formal, very private persona.

The sound of sawing ceased as a cup of tea made its way out to the gardener. He settled down comfortably on his haunches and gulped down the hot, sweet liquid gratefully, wondering who had tended the tree so carefully that it rose past the garden wall and thrust its strongest branch towards the next door window of the lady looking out with sad eyes.