Varun finds his match

Varun is getting ready to marry Yamini, a Bengali graphic designer, with the imprimatur of his mother, Maneka Gandhi.

By Manisha

The youngest scion of the Gandhi-Nehru family, Feroze Varun Gandhi, son of firebrand veggie and animal rights activist Maneka Gandhi and the late Sanjay Gandhi, has just turned 25, which should be a matter of some celebration, since he's just left his antediluvian youth behind. But this is beside the point. One of the most eligible bachelors on the subcontinent is about to marry a girl from West Bengal.

But the man-boy is more seasoned than his years show: having made his mark as a political campaigner with a formidable command over shudh Hindi — a language his family has traditionally had trouble articulating in-Varun now wants to enter the Lok Sabha and the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership, to which party he is proving to be a somewhat patrician asset.

The Bengali girl, Yamini, a year older than Varun and a graphic designer by vocation, has virtually taken control of his life. Daughter of a former diplomat, she originated in Kolkata and has ended up in South Delhi's tony Defence Colony. Maneka's imprimatur on their relationship and marriage plans-due, according to close family sources, to fructify soon-wasn't at all apparently a problem.

Varun is said to have met Yamini at a party organised by a common friend in Delhi two years ago. It wasn't the classical, but often blighted, love at first sight. The relationship flourished through subsequent meetings. Besides Yamini's good looks, Varun was floored by her intelligence and maturity.

(In fact — if you can keep a secret — the couple can often be found at Oberoi Hotel's 360 degrees and Taj Man Singh's House of Ming on weekends. Varun is a vegetarian, and so is Yamini, and in line with their genteelness, they have been espied canoodling privately in the corners.) There goeth another palatine bachelor and another available bachelorette.