Lord Parekh launches Brideless in Wembley

Letter from london...

If you are tired of flying, or taking a boat cruise around the world why not try a brand new experience  — a bus ride from London to Sydney.

The first OzBus departed from the Thames Embankment on Sunday morning at 9 am carrying 38 passengers who had all signed up for a three-month adventure trip to Australia by road taking in 20 countries including India along the way. The bus will enter India at Amritsar in the fourth week of the journey.

It will stop off the Corbett Tiger Reserve for an overnight stay. It will proceed to Delhi and then on to the Taj Mahal in Agra. Varanasi is another stop that the bus plans to make before moving to Nepal and Tibet to see the majesty of the Himalayas.

The one-way journey will take 12 weeks and comes for a mere £3,750 with all travel costs, meals and accommodation included.

However it is not suited for those who revel in five-star luxury as passengers will be asked to sleep in tents and cook their own meals on open fires. Backpackers are the ideal passengers and interestingly, not one of the inaugural bus passengers was Indian! 

The Nehru Centre in London’s West End was packed on Thursday evening for the launch of Sanjay Suri’s book Brideless in Wembley.

Suri, a senior journalist, who has lived in the UK for the last 16 years regaled the audience with his attempts to find a wife in a shadhi sammelan in Wembley, the heart of London’s Gujarati community.

Lord Bhikhu Parekh, launching the book, commended Suri for his keen eye for detail saying that he could recognise many of the characters as people whom he knew or characteristics in himself.

“I found myself saying do we do that?” and then replying “yes we do” said Lord Parekh. He praised Suri for his ‘compassionate’ look at the British Indian community, laughing with them from the inside at their foibles rather than laughing at them.

Lord Bagdi, Baroness Sreela Flather, businesswoman Surina Narula and other prominent Indians toasted Suri and hoped that his search for a bride may come to an end among the throng of fans his book has created.

Lord Ganesh — Mumbai’s favourite God — came to the UK in grand style this year. More than 10,000 devotees descended on the seaside resort Southend-on-Sea to celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi on Sunday. A six-foot idol was consecrated with full pomp and ceremony.

Organised by the Jalaram Mandir of Greenford in Middlesex and the Hindu Association of Southend-on-Sea, Hindus from all over Britain converged in around 100 coaches on the sleepy town normally popular as a retirement destination for the white elderly.

In true Mumbai manner devotees danced and sang beseeching Lord Ganesh to return next year as they immersed the idol into the cold North Sea.