Indian youth awaits bride from Pakistan amid tensions, tweets Modi, Sushma Swaraj

After his cross-border wedding ran into the headwinds of rising tensions between India and Pakistan, a youth in Jodhpur has approached External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, who on Friday assured him of help. Jodhpur resident Naresh Tewani and Karachi-based Priya Bachchani, who are planning to tie the knot exactly a month from now, were facing anxious moments as the Indian embassy in Pakistan had not granted visas to the bride’s family and relatives.

According to the groom, despite having applied for visas in the prescribed time and format, no one from the bride’s side has been issued the documents so far. Seeing no headway in the process, Tewani had reached out to External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Twitter for help.

Swaraj on Friday responded to his plea saying that the visas would be issued to them. “Pl do not worry. We will issue the Visa(sic),” she said on Twitter. Tewani said, “The applications for visas for the family of the bride were filed well in time about 3 months back. We assumed that the documents would be issued in time.”

The groom’s family had said wedding preparations had come to a standstill as all their efforts were being directed towards ensuring that the bride’s family gets the documents. “The minister has been quite responsive to tweets by people in trouble and they have received aid from her. Seeing her willingness to resolve the troubles of those in need, we knocked on her twitter account,” Tewani said.

“The wedding is scheduled on November 7 and all preparations have been completed.We now fear we may have to postpone the wedding,” Naresh said.

“It was my long-cherished dream to have a Pakistani bride for my son since my visit to Pakistan in 2001, considering the resemblance in culture and traditions between the two countries. But given the circumstances, I was afraid that the realisation of this dream might take longer,” the groom’s father Kanhaiya Lal said.

Naresh got en gaged to Priya Bachchani of Karachi in Pakistan over two years back after their families met through a matrimony service, run by Naresh’s father Kanhaiya Lal Tewani as a social service for the community . “Both the sides agreed and Priya came with her family to Jodhpur for the engagement in 2014,” said the groom’s father, adding that it was decided to hold the wedding after Priya’s father, a doctor in a government hospital in Pakistan, retired.