India's star couple presents Rumi to wedding guests

By Sorwar Alam

ANKARA (AA) - India's star couple gifted an anthology of poems by Rumi to guests at their wedding ceremony in Italy earlier this week, according to reports in the Indian media.

India's cricket team captain Virat Kohli and Bollywood actress Anushka Sharma got married on Dec.11 in a village in Tuscany, after dating for four years.

As a token of their love for the most celebrated Sufi poet, the couple gifted an anthology of his poems to their wedding guests, the Times of India reported.

Rumi, fondly known by his followers in Turkey as Mevlana which means scholar, was a 13th-century Muslim poet, sufi mystic and philosopher born in present-day Afghanistan.

He is buried in Turkey's central province of Konya, where his followers flock to his mausoleum, especially on his death anniversary.

Rumi's Masnavi poem, with its more than 50,000 verses, is considered the most influential work in Sufism, and has been translated into 25 languages.

Kohli is among the world's highest-paid athletes and Sharma is one of the top actresses in Bollywood, India's multi-billion-dollar film industry.

Dubbed "Virushka" by Indian media, their links to Bollywood and cricket, two of India's biggest crazes, make them a high profile couple.