Column | What was it about the Ambani wedding that had many of us scrolling through Instagram Reels endlessly? Premium

The biggest Indian wedding extravaganza sparks reflections on wealth, inequality, and cultural clashes, with a surprise celebrity connection.

The biggest, fattest Indian wedding ever has been a humbling experience. At first, I affected an air of studied disdain for the naked opulence of the Anant Ambani-Radhika Merchant wedding extravaganza.

A journalist friend messaged from abroad to ask if I was following the wedding. I replied snootily, “Trying hard to avoid it.”

I had forgotten what Oscar Wilde had written. “Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it, do that.”

Part of my weariness stemmed from the fact that the wedding seemed to be without end. As Subham Chaudhuri, the popular Bengali comedy content creator @bong_short, said in a video: “This is like the soul that lives on endlessly… People’s semesters end, the entire T-20 World Cup ends, Euro Cup ends, Copa America ends, Ronaldo’s form ends but the Ambani wedding never ends.” Some remarked that the wedding, like the groom’s name, is anant — without an end. Clearly nothing succeeds like excess.

“Will you talk about the incongruity of it all on air?” asked my journalist friend. I hastily brushed up on facts and figures — the Ambanis’ net worth, the number of carats in one of the diamond necklaces, the VVIP guest list as well as India’s wealth gap and social indices. During the pre-wedding hoopla, Swati Narayan, author of Unequal: Why India Lags Behind its Neighbours (2023), said in an interview that the “inequality in India is the worst that it’s been since the days of the British Raj” and the “entire bottom half of India’s population has to survive on 6% of the country’s wealth”. But many also felt the richest man in India had the right to spend his money any way he wanted.

For Indians, a fairytale wedding had once meant Prince Charles marrying Lady Diana in London. Now, a Guardian headline read: ‘Ambani wedding: After months of celebrations, the “Windsors” of India finally set to marry’. But with a price tag estimated at $600 million, the Windsors probably cannot afford a wedding like that any more.

As I scrolled through the wedding and pre-wedding videos on Instagram in the name of research, I realised that white people, especially men, still look extremely uncomfortable in Indian regalia. Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, all looked like they had wandered out of a Halloween party, stiff cutouts in Maharaja costumes. Also, thanks to the wedding, I learnt who John Cena was. Actor and wrestler and wedding guest. Cena too looked awkward as he tried out his Bollywood moves in his blue outfit with roses on his shoulders. I count that as a moment of post-colonial revenge.