Sara Tendulkar after Arjun’s wedding: ‘Walking away before you’re married is a great step’

Dubai: In March, Sara Tendulkar watched her younger brother marry in front of what was effectively a roll call of Indian cricket. MS Dhoni, Sunil Gavaskar, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, Ravi Shastri, Yuvraj Singh and Virender Sehwag were all in the room.

Speaking to Vogue India, she has described the whole thing as useful research.

"I feel like that was a great trial round for me," she said. "Now I know what I want and what I don't want."

What she wants has changed

She grew up imagining a pastel wedding on a grand scale. That is no longer the plan.

She now favours something considerably more intimate, and has moved away from pastels entirely, saying she might go for a traditional red instead.

Then, characteristically, she left the door open. "I'm a Libra, very indecisive. Who knows? Maybe I'll go with green."

"I've seen people get engaged and, during the run-up to the wedding, realise they're seeing the true colours of their partner or their partner's family and think, I can't do this anymore," she said.

She also spoke up about agency in marriages.

"I think walking away before you're married is a great step," she said.

"Previous generations were more afraid to stand up for themselves, whereas Gen Z feels more confident and empowered to do so when things are going wrong."

Her parents as the template

Sachin and Anjali Tendulkar married in 1995 after several years together. He had proposed at 19 and married at 22, and the marriage has held through a career that kept him out of the country for much of it.

What Sara takes from it is not romance but friendship.

"My parents are very good friends before anything else," she said. "They have this really fun banter at home, and that's definitely something I would want in my future partner."

She went further on the dynamic between them. "There's never any power dynamic playing out between them, which is amazing."

She also described noticing, as she grew older, quite how difficult the logistics had been. "When I was younger, I thought this was what all relationships were like. As I grew up, I started thinking about how they managed a long-distance marriage. We didn't have FaceTime or WhatsApp 20 years ago, and even international calls were expensive."

Asked whether she sees love as friendship, she laughed and said exactly.

She was equally clear about where her closest bonds sit. "I'd like to believe that romantic soulmates exist, but my best friends are definitely, one hundred per cent, my soulmates."

Arjun Tendulkar married Saaniya Chandhok on 5 March at a private venue in South Mumbai, following pre-wedding celebrations in Jamnagar from 3 March. The couple announced their engagement on 25 August last year.

Chandhok is a Mumbai entrepreneur and the granddaughter of businessman Ravi Ghai, whose family interests include the InterContinental hotel and the dessert brand Brooklyn Creamery. Reports at the time suggested the couple had known each other since childhood and that Chandhok is close to Sara.

Sara wore a multi-hued lehenga with a red base, with a two-tiered necklace and maang tikka. Which, given what she has just said about red, may not have been coincidental.