Jeet Adani and Diva Jaimin Shah: The wedding goes slim

Another celebrity who opted for the small and simple wedding option was athlete Neeraj Chopra

So Jeet Adani is to have a ‘traditional and simple’ wedding sans celebrities or media glare. His father told the press that the auspicious date was finalised during a visit by the Adani family to the Mahakumbh in Prayagraj, where the muhurat was decided in the presence of vedic scholars.

This statement puts to rest the rumours circulating wildly that celebrities ranging from King Charles and Pope Francis to Serena Williams, Daniel Craig, Taylor Swift and Elon Musk would arrive like a phalanx of fairy godmothers to bless the newlyweds and their happy families.

As an Aadhaar card-carrying member of the gawking populace, I am not particularly disappointed. Anyway, celeb surfeit is kinda trending. What with the Ram temple inauguration last year, then all the pre-wedding and wedding celebrations for Anant and Radhika, followed by the Donald Trump swearing-in, and the multiple Coldplay concerts, it had become exhausting to keep track of what everybody wore, what they said, what gifts were exchanged, and how much everything cost.

Jeet Adani and Diva Jaimin Shah Jeet Adani and Diva Jaimin Shah

One doesn’t need to have a marketing degree to grasp why the Adanis, planning a wedding at the heels of the Ambani extravaganza last year, figured that a massive blow-out wedding would only deliver diminishing returns. Far wiser to go small and simple and virtuous and occupy the high moral ground, that too at minimal cost—something that has eternal appeal to the Gujarati heart.

Another much-touted reason to go small and simple is fear of the evil eye. That’s such a privilege flex, isn’t it? I think it may be the biggest one ever! Like I am doing so well in life that my biggest fear is that somebody will hex me. So, I go around putting thoo-thoo-thoo and the Turkish evil eye emoji at the end of all my social media posts and donating money all around. In this country with its million markers of caste and class and wealth and success, it may very well be the definitive measure of having crossed over from being a have-not to a have—the day you transition from putting the evil eye, to fearing the evil eye!

Another celebrity who opted for the small and simple wedding option recently is high-throwing Haryanvi hunk Neeraj Chopra. With his usual unceremonious less-talk-more-action swag, he snucked off to a super luxury resort in Himachal Pradesh with his nearest and dearest ones, and got married by a pandit who didn’t recognise him in order to ensure the secret didn’t spill out. The buzzwords for such events are usually #intimate #private #cosy #simple. The guests list hovers at around 300, and the no-holds-barred bloodshed in celeb circles to secure a place on that exclusive list of 300 is far gorier than the violence and carnage showcased in the film 300. (This is great entertainment for us gawkers, too—much more fun than who-wore-what actually!)

By the way, if you are hoping that these weddings may cause cheaper weddings to become the norm, you are going to end up disappointed. Because hosting a 300 people wedding is yet another privilege reserved for the fabulously wealthy or insanely famous. The rest of us would immediately be hit with accusations of cheaping out. So unless we develop a very thick skin, we will continue to have to spend (an average of) Rs20 lakh for a wedding. To put that figure in context—our average per capita income is Rs1.4 lakh. So, basically, as a nation, we have normalised spending 15 years worth of our earnings on a three- to four-day event. No wonder Gen Z doesn’t want to get married only. It isn’t fear of commitment. It is fear of expenditure.

editor@theweek.in