So I have spent the best part of the weekend trying to console and reason with ammi-ji and try and work on her to get her to accept Imran’s decision.  

I tried to explain that she was being simply racist not accepting Jemima as Imran’s choice of bride and given that Jemima is a woman of the book, Imran was not really breaking any religious law in marrying her anyway, in fact he was perfectly entitled to marry her without her even having to accept Islam.  And herein lay the problem as ammi-ji saw it:  she did not object to the ‘gori girl’ per se, indeed she thought many of them were kind natured and the Middleton sisters Kate and Pippa, along with Cheryl Cole were even quite attractive – their lovely locks and dark eyes and olive skin made them almost Asian (I didn’t want to start explaining the popularity of fake tan at this stage to her!) – but the fact her future grandchildren would be confused by having these two families with different cultures.  

In truth, it did not matter which argument I was to put to ammi-ji – the emotional, moral, religious – ammi-ji was not having any of it.  Her stubbornness on this issue would make it very hard to move forward on it. And where was VIS when I needed some support on this matter? Reporting on the problems of the nation and abroad; as always the public was far easier for her to deal with than the private.   

Still no news from Imran, he is not available on his phone and having made rather tenuous contact with his friends, I seem to be drawing blanks – no doubt they are covering for him as they often did when he was at uni, only this is more serious, he hasn’t just gone to a late night gig at the student union. Perhaps I need to try another approach  and locate Jemima, surely she will know where he is if he is not with her. And I could do with checking out this lady, over whom all the fuss is about!

And more importantly, I must attend to my children, who in the midst of all this drama, have been rather neglected by me but having a great time with their dad: waking and sleeping late, eating junk food unregulated, watching tv unsupervised and and playing limitlessly on their Wii, Xbox, DS, Ipod, Ipad and a whole host of other devices whose names /initials I cannot keep up with. With school starting tomorrow that should settle them into a regular routine and I can begin putting my tiger mother tactics and strategies in place.