A wedding that was the talk of Madras Premium

A detailed account of a lavish 1950s wedding in Madras involving celebrities, extravagant festivities, and unexpected chaos.

A wedding has taken hold of social and other kinds of media and made news the world over. Who would think that there was a wedding in conservative Madras, too, that at one time made it to national news? And no, I do not mean the wedding of the foster son which happened in the 1990s. It was the wedding of Lakshminarayani, daughter of movie mogul S.S. Vasan of Gemini Studios. And it took place in May 1950. And it was the mega event of its time. If the present wedding-in-the-news has lasted for more than a year, the earlier one spanned five days, with related events lasting for almost a month.

Those were days when weddings of the affluent took place at their homes, and Gemini House (since demolished) was the venue for much of the festivity. With Vasan being the owner of a film studio and a hugely popular magazine (Ananda Vikatan), the list of celebrities in attendance was long. His having produced India’s first pan-Indian success from the south (Chandralekha) a couple of years earlier meant a huge chunk of Bollywood was in attendance as well. Vasan, of course, knew all of them and they made it to the festivities voluntarily, more out of love and affection for what he had done for them.

Everything about the wedding made it to the news. To have received an invitation for it meant you had arrived. It was said that the prices of everything, from gold to curry leaves, went up all around the city as preparations progressed. Excitement reached fever pitch on May 19, when despite the presence of mounted police and guards from Gemini, the public gatecrashed. They were allowed in and filed past the glittering array of gifts, all displayed by Gemini staffers. Apart from the glamour and glitter, the good taste in all arrangements was remembered. Everyone who came in was fed — at Gemini Studios, at a temple nearby, and at local schools taken over for the purpose.

The wedding pandal, done up by Gemini carpenters, was a sight by itself. There were music and dance performances by classical artistes, all of them of top calibre. The arrival of the groom in procession saw Mylapore cordoned off, as the crowds exceeded that of the Kapaliswarar Temple’s Arupathu Moovar festival. The sheer crush of people meant some VIPs stayed away. To make amends for this, Vasan held of a series of intimate dinners, each one for a hundred people, that spread for almost a month. The entire proceedings were captured on cinema and later edited as a two-reel version played to Gemini visitors.

In 1956, Vasan conducted his son’s wedding. That was on the plot where the Music Academy stands. While this too received media attention, the earlier one lived on in memory. But the wedding of Vasan’s son stood out for another reason. Ashokamitran, in his My Years With The Boss, writes of how each of the Gemini and Vikatan staffers got a rosewood box with a dhoti, and a saree for the spouse. Many of the women were not happy with the saree they got, and Mrs. Vasan, in all her kindness, said they could come to Gemini House to exchange them. Nobody had anticipated that all the spouses would descend on Gemini House the very next day. With over a thousand women thronging the place, the road had to be cordoned off. The next day, a memo went out from the Boss — No Saree Exchange. Even Vasan had his limits.

(V. Sriram is a writer and historian.)