00:00 In the introduction, editor Chinki Sinha writes,
00:03 "Wed in India.
00:05 My middle-class family has watched too many clips
00:08 of the spectacular weddings of celebrities
00:11 that even have the power to change social media algorithms.
00:15 My aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces
00:18 have now started to hire choreographers
00:20 to train them to dance on stage in locations other than home
00:25 so they can have a destination wedding tag.
00:27 That's the trend."
00:29 In his Man Ki Baat episode last year,
00:31 Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked Indians to wed in India.
00:35 The big fat Indian wedding is now a big soft power export.
00:40 After all, Beyonce and Rihanna have been paid
00:43 enormous amounts of money to perform at the Ambani weddings.
00:47 That sets us up as people who can get a guest list
00:51 only comparable to a Davos summit.
00:54 Nevermind the poverty that's often pushed behind
00:57 giant billboards that advertise schemes
01:00 and achievements of our country
01:02 and big weddings that are televised
01:04 and projected everywhere on social media.
01:08 We are voyeurs.
01:09 We want to know who wore what and what it cost.
01:12 It's all about optics.
01:15 And optics is what matters in this day and age of social media.
01:20 Nobody wants to know that a Dalit man was beaten up
01:23 when he tried to ride a horse at his wedding.
01:26 That's not what changes the algorithms across the world.
01:29 It was way before these times that writer and artist
01:33 Susan Sontag wrote,
01:35 "Today, everything exists to end in a photograph"
01:39 in her 1977 book on photography.
01:42 At a recent family wedding, there was a lot of that.
01:45 Everything was inspired by filmy weddings.
01:48 The mandap overlooked the mountains.
01:51 The bride and the groom spent most of their time
01:53 posing for photos, which were then processed
01:56 by an event company and posted with a personalized hashtag.
02:00 We were in Egadpuri, and part of the resort
02:03 has a Dubai kind of feel.
02:05 In other spots, it looked like you were in the mountains.
02:09 There was an emcee, master of ceremonies.
02:12 There was a dress code for every function.
02:14 Most Indian weddings are no longer what they used to be,
02:18 but have become a showcase of social conservatism
02:21 with the glamorized return to tradition
02:24 in a way in which ambition and aspirations
02:27 are cast in a new mold,
02:29 where it is then mostly about class
02:31 and conspicuous consumption.
02:34 I remember when my cousin was getting married in the 1990s,
02:38 the film Hum Aapke Hai Kaun,
02:40 I had become all the rage.
02:43 The big fat Indian wedding was glamorized in a way
02:46 that even a small little neighborhood in Patna
02:49 had girls who were inspired by the outfits
02:51 Madhuri Dixit wore in the film.
02:53 Designed by Anna Singh,
02:55 who was one of the first costume designers
02:57 to work in the Indian film industry,
02:59 the purple saree that Dixit wore
03:02 cost around rupees 15 lakhs, according to reports.
03:05 Her green and white lehenga set was duly copied by the girls,
03:09 and they tried to replicate the ceremony
03:12 of stealing the groom's shoes.
03:13 I remember it led to a massive confusion
03:16 where the clueless groom just handed over the shoes himself.
03:20 Then we had mehendi and sangeet,
03:22 and over the years,
03:23 we started to do everything filmy, like everyone else.
03:27 Reports said that in about a month,
03:30 from November 23rd to December 15th in 2023,
03:35 about 3.5 million couples had weddings,
03:38 and the spending was about 4.25 trillion,
03:42 about $57 billion.
03:45 As per the confederation of all India traders.
03:49 The thing that we are losing in all this is the identity,
03:52 the uniqueness that we had in terms of customs and rituals
03:57 that made weddings also a site of memory of who we are.
04:02 Now it is a hybrid kind of wedding that fuses so many things
04:06 that it only becomes an exercise in ostentation and soft power.
04:11 A boastful thing too.
04:13 Rehana danced at a pre-wedding function
04:16 of the son of the ninth richest man in the world, Mukesh Ambani.
04:20 World leaders attended.
04:22 TV reports talked about elephant food there.
04:25 Everything bizarre became normalized, humanized,
04:29 and now we wonder, what will the wedding be like?
04:32 That's going to occupy the national imagination for a while.
04:36 All this money has done its bit.
04:39 Caste, class, and everything else that keeps us away from each other
04:43 have been celebrated, and how?
04:46 For this and more, read the latest issue of Outlook.
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