London, January 2, 2005 NRIpress
Ella Gabriella, 23, daughter of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, plans to marry her Indian boyfriend Aatish Taseer, a Time magazine trainee journalist
Ella, the 30th in line to the throne, was studying Spanish and English literature at Brown University, Rhode Island, in America when she met 24-year-old Aatish, a Mumbai-born Sikh, who occasionally dress up as Captain Condom to promote the importance of safe sex.
"Prince and Princess Michael of Kent will announce that their elegant 23-year-old daughter is to marry Aatish early this year," The Sunday Telegraph reported today. The couple are likely to live in India.
"I will be heading back to India to pursue my career," says Aatish who is working as a trainee reporter for 'Time' magazine.
The opportunities in media out there are excellent and I'm determined to give it a go. I've lived here in London and in New York, but Delhi is where I am from and where I want to be," he told the newspaper.
His wedding to Lady Gabriella, also an aspiring journalist, will certainly help to put to rest accusations of racism that have dogged her mother since she allegedly told a table of black diners in a Manhattan restaurant to "go back to the colonies" after they ignored her request to quieten down. Princess Michael subsequently dismissed them as a "group of rappers" who had simply misheard her.
Aatish Taseer is a product of an extraordinary love match. His mother, Tavleen Singh, is a Sikh and a respected political journalist in Dehli. His father, Salman Taseer, is a Muslim and a newspaper mogul in Pakistan. Likewise, Lady Gabriella’s mother Princess Michael of Kent, a Roman Catholic, had a complicated romance when she met her husband.
At the time a friend of Gabriella’s said she and Aatish were well suited: “Ella (Gabriella) loves anyone with a sharp mind. By all accounts Aatish is very intelligent… She is really happy and keeps saying she thinks she has met the one.”
The Prince and Princess Michael reportedly travelled to Mumbai to meet Aatish and his mother Tavleen Singh, who is a well-known columnist in India.
Prince Michael’s uncle, the late Earl Mountbatten of Burma, introduced the pair and convinced the Queen that Princess Michael’s distinguished lineage outweighed the vexed question of her Catholicism. However, when they married in 1978, the prince had to relinquish his rights to the throne.
The Kents, who are now both Catholics, are said to be relaxed and happy about their daughter’s relationship with Taseer, who US newspapers have reported as being a Sikh.
Aware of her own experience and that of her daughter, Princess Michael has been quick to assert that it “wouldn’t be a problem legally” if Prince William were to take a “lovely Muslim girl” as his girlfriend.