India-Deborah's love bilateral

The notion of the manglik - bestowing bad luck to the person one marries - is known to have a standard 'cure': marrying either an animal (usually a stray dog) or a tree to invest it with the manglik dosh, and then 'cleansed' of spouse-carrying virus, safely marrying again, this time a human preferably. In Britain, at least among the non-South Asian lot, the idea of a manglik hasn't really taken off (neither has the kundli, despite Rishi Sunak's problems that some source to a mismatch of kundlis with his missus). But when a 49-year-old woman in London married her pet cat, she did tie the knot in a civil ceremony to change her and her cat's fortune. By finding a loophole in the rental restrictions that disallow pets to cohabit in the apartment - but allow spouses of no specified species or gender (the cat is female) - Deborah Hodge manglik-ed the authorities in their own game.

The couple had their wedding ceremony dressed in tuxedos and Hodge recited marriage vows - since exchanging them was not really an option considering the language gap of one of the newly-weds. Along with the legal reason for the human-feline nuptials, Hodge stated that it would have been impossible for her to live apart and she would have rather lived with her cat on the streets than separated in a home. And the beloved cat's name? India.