Bride and Prejudice - The Big Fat Indian Weddings and Diaspora

Bride and Prejudice - The Big Fat Indian Weddings and Diaspora

The weddings are solemnized in heaven.   If the heaven is recreated on the earth to say ”I do”, it becomes a Rs.552 cr.  lavish extravaganza.   The reigning superstars  from  the tinsel  town performs in a wedding venue in India, the sky comes down and the real stars glitters in the high end Boutique palaces  and the Hautel  Couture.

Subroto Roy - Sahara, London based Indian billionaire Laxmi Mittal and the NRI  Hotel magnet Turban Cowboy Vikram Chatwal from United States,  the Indian diaspora of Wedding Bells really takes more than Saath Phera.

                                                    

              

                

The wedding season arrives in India and the wedding planners are busy to host the most expensive and lavish wedding sacraments amongst the global communities.  The above billionaires are some of the few who celebrated their progeny’s weddings in a “Band Baja Bharat” (musical uniformed band with decorated horse carts and the bridegroom in traditional wedding attire mounted on the horse) style with pomp and show.  The glamour and glitter of most celebrated weddings are real eye candy for the wedding gazers.

Bride and Prejudice the Movie -

   
                

      

The Bride and Prejudice is a Bollywood flick of 2006 directed by Gurinder Chadha,  the “Bend it Like Beckham” fame,   casting internationally acclaimed Indian actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in the lead role opposite Hollywood actor Martin Henderson.

It tells the story of four sisters of marriageable age and their parent’s search for suitable bridegrooms.  The elder daughter Lalita Bakshi (Aishwarya Rai) is intent upon marrying at her own choosing, for love.  Lalita endures a number of hopeful suitors, but the American William Darcy (Martin Henderson) seems different – and not always in a good way.  Misunderstandings, Schemes and Lies threaten to keep the two from true love.  The romance between the two takes a beating due to circumstances and boorish opinions.

The movie is a Bollywood adaptation of Jane Austin’s classic “Pride and Prejudice”.

 
 

        

Coming back from the reel world to the real world extravaganzas, Sahara giant Subroto Roy’s two sons wedding cost in 2004 was a whopping  Rs.552 crores.    The lavish wedding celebrations were  spread across  Mumbai-Udaipur-Delhi (The Udaipur and Jodhpur palaces in Rajasthan, India are sought after marriage venues). The wedding was attended by major politicians, film stars and other prominent dignitaries including high flying bureaucrats.

The fairy tale wedding of Vikram Chatwal -

The wedding  of Vikram Chatwal to model/actress Priya Sachdev in 2006 had a 6 foot 12-tier Wedding Cake and flowers worth 7 lakh  US Dollars.  The wedding cost was 20 million US Dollars.  Vikram Chatwal is a scion of sprawling,  multi-continental hotel-and-restaurant chain called Hampshire hotels.  His  family owns eleven Hotels in Manhattan including the Majestic and the Dream in Times Square which has Deepak Chopra Spa and a Serafina restaurant.

Vikram Chatwal used to patronize New York night clubs in a red or white turban in the company of Super Model Naomi Campbell and was nick named as Turban Cowboy.  Raised in an Upper East Side penthouse and sent to the United Nations International School and the University of Pennsylvania’s  Wharton School of Business, Vikram now lives high above Central Park in Trump International in an airy condo filled with African and Indian Art and drives an Aston Martin. His father recalls that Vikram wanted to charter a plane for Hollywood actress, Kate Moss.  His father entrusted the job of finding a bride for Vikram to Indian socialite Queenie Dhody who was their family friend. Queenie finally tracked down Priya Sachdev who had also studied at London School of Economics and worked as an Investment Banker for a year.  Priya was an actress and model in Delhi and was camera friendly.  Vikram’s father recalls that his aim was to do the most outstanding wedding that ever existed taking into account Vikram’s lifestyle.  There were millions of dollars worth jewelry used in Vikram Chatwal’s wedding.

Vikram Chatwal’s wedding was really a fairy tale wedding.

Steel tycoon Laxmi Mittal’s daughter Vanisha’s wedding -

The other “Big Fat Indian Wedding” was the  London based NRI(Non-resident Indian) billionaire Laxmi Mittal’s daughter’s wedding.  Laxmi Mittal’s daughter Vanisha Mittal’s  wedding was second most expensive wedding extravaganza in the recorded history.  Being a vegetarian, Laxmi  Mittal threw a lavish “Vegetarian Reception”  for his daughter in the Palace of Versailles, France.

Laxmi Mittal is the Chairman & CEO of ArcelorMittal world’s largest steel making company.  

Laxmi Mittal won Forbes Life Time Achievement Award and Government of India’s top  National Honor “Padma Vibhushan”.  He had also won Wall Street Journal’s “Entrepreneur of the year” award in 2004. In 2007, TIME magazine included him in their “100 most influential persons in the world”.

Laxmi Mittal  has been  a member of the Board of Directors in Goldman Sachs since 2008.

The King and Queens of entertainment in lavish Indian weddings –

The reality shows of entertainment makers in “Big Fat Indian Weddings” are debatable.  The bollywood actors do dance numbers in a wedding celebration for a monetary reward.  The celluloid dream merchants stooping down from their acting skills to gyrate a dance number for a fee is not aesthetic.  It is agreed that the tinsel world dedicate their life for entertainment and often they are object of fantasy for general public.  

An ardent fan who always appreciate and respect the acting histrionics of their favorite actors are let down when seeing the cult figures are reduced to “naach gaana”(song and dance)  in front of wealthy participants of lavish weddings for monetary considerations.  This is nothing better than bar dancers in a hotel.   A request to refrain from anything for money and remain respectful actors and not just stars.

Social evils – a curse in Indian society -

After the glitter and glamorous side of big fat weddings, let us examine the other side of marriages existing in some parts of India. 

The Child Marriage is a curse in the Indian society wherein the couple are not matured enough to take such a big decision about their life.  The parents and other elders in the family decide the bride and bridegroom for their children when they are still in a tender age.  This is high time to ban Child Marriage and allow the wedding partners to have a say in their life long unison.   We must only legalize the wedding of a person who had attained adulthood.  The body and mind has to be matured enough to chose one’s partner.

Thomas Moore’s Utopia envisages a society in which a prospective bride or bridegroom’s physical attributes are laid bare to choose the partner.

Though the conservative Indian society is far from such permissiveness, the right to seek the opinion of wedding partners has to be upheld.

Another social evil being not allowing Widow re-marriage.  A girl who loses her husband in an early marriage, is made to live without considered for another marriage in her entire life-time.  We must encourage widow re-marriage and allow a life for widow after her husband’s death.

The wedding is generally a common happening in a person’s life.  Every parent want their daughters to marry handsome, well educated and well settled boys.  Though the age factor after attaining adulthood is not a criteria for marriage.

The saying goes that there are many hardships in marriage but where is the happiness in single status.  The mutual respect for the trustworthy partner with love, care and sacrifice triggers a happy married life.  A marriage with lesser adjustments are considered to be a successful one.  

Let me conclude this blog post with the firm belief that there is no life without wife.