The Big Fat Indian Wedding

By now many of the guests will be enjoying a lazy rainy day in one of a number of luxury hotels.  Shakira and the Gotan project will have packed and left, the elephants will be on their way back to wherever it was that they came from, an army of workers will be beginning the task of cleaning up and the bride and groom will be contemplating a life together.  While most of the world’s attention has been taken up with certain nuptials in the UK organisation for the real wedding of the century has been underway in Venice.  This week Venice got its own dose of Bollywood glamour and excess in the form of the wedding of Vineeta daughter of the mega rich iron tycoon Pramod Argawal.

The local papers have been breathlessly reporting the staggering stats of this event and to quickly summarise:  800+ guests, three locations, two elephants, cooks and designers, djs and photographers brought over from India, flower designers from Paris, multi Michelin starred chefs, Shakira and dancers as well as the Gotan Project and a whopping 20 million euro for the whole shebang.  Almost every luxury hotel in Venice has been requisitioned for the wedding guests.  If all that wasn’t enough to get you crying about the lack of invite the entertainment for the big day has been months in the production and involved an “entire re-enactment of imaginary cities, a 17 by 8 meter canvas meticulously painted with acrylic colours by a specialist, that reproduces a famous Canaletto view of Bacino Marciano on a huge scale, chandeliers made of flowers, amazing lighting effects and more.” – Vogue Italia.  Speaking from experience subtlety is not a concept that is too familiar to the Indians.  My invitation getting lost, I was tempted to pull out my Indian outfit and see if I could crash the gig but even in the right gear I doubted my ability to pass off as a rich Indian glamour puss.  I really wanted to go the first night celebrations where as one Indian marriage website reports "Guests will dance with a submarine on their heads to the music of Gothan Project." 

 

Once a week I teach some lessons at the Consiglio in Venice and when I arrived last Monday THE WEDDING was all anyone could talk about.  While the Consiglio had much to organise for the event there was a great deal of interest in the sheer scale and lavishness of the shindig.  As well as the impromptu Indian pronunciation lesson I had to give there was much explaining of the process of the three day affair that is an Indian wedding  - made all the more difficult as I’m no expert having only been bored through the many I was dragged to as a child. 

Of course the Venetians have had dealings with India for well over a millennia.  The early Venetian merchants traded European timber and metal in return for spices from the sub-continent.  More recently the Indian movie industry has used the lagoon for some of its fantastic song and dance numbers.  In fact to me, this wedding had echoes of the lavish spectacles that Venice was once famous for.  While it may seem jarring to have the colourful excesses of Indian fantasy in Venice on second thought it’s a perfect marriage Venice itself is a fantasy city.  As divorced of reality as the most lavish of Bollywood movies where love conquers all and the right guy and girl always get together.  Anyone who visits Venice seems to come more for the fantasy of masks and gondolas than anything based in reality.  I can’t help but ponder on the irony of spending months and who knows how much money on painting a view of the bacino when the real thing is outside, could it be that Venice has become a place that lives more in our minds so much so that the image is more real than reality? 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRpf8kmEPnU



Sorry, Will and Kate who?