When a son or daughter is not married yet, the question arrives at every function, every phone call and every family gathering. It follows you home, and it is often the only thing anyone wants to talk about.

Underneath it sits something harder to say. Who will look after them when we are gone. Will they be lonely. Are we running out of years. What are people saying about our family. In most homes here there is one more thing: the sense that seeing a child married is a parent’s last duty, and that until it is done, something in your own life is unfinished.

Until Then is written for parents in those waiting years. It begins with that worry rather than arguing with it. It explains what has changed since your own wedding, and why a search that took three months in your time can take two years now. It shows what constant asking does, and why the parents who push hardest are often the last to be told anything. It gives you words for the relatives, and for the conversations with your own child that are hardest to begin, including what to say if they bring home someone you did not expect. It ends with your own life, your own plan, and what counselling is and how to begin.

48 pages, mostly for reading, with a few pages to write on. Written by the counsellors at Hibiscus Counselling in Adyar, Chennai, who sit with both generations.

What’s inside, if you want bullets on the page

-What you are actually afraid of

-What has changed since your wedding

-What the asking does

-The relatives, and what to say to them

-Talking to your child

-Your own life

-What counselling is, and how to begin.