M any countries held their elections, people voted for new governments and the cricket World Cup concluded. Films won Oscars, countries went to war and people died while the saga of the Ambani wedding continued. The ubiquitous wedding had a constant flood of videos surfacing on social media.
The vicarious thrill of partaking in such a grand event was undeniable. Love it or cancel it, it was impossible to ignore. They have averaged an event every five weeks over the past seven months.
Finally, there were to be public events, the wedding on July 12 and a grand reception on July 14. With this culmination, a new notion of publicness emerges where the personal and public conjoin the politics, ethics and emotions in a New India. Unable to make sense of this display of wealth at a time when quiet luxury is trending, called the event “an ode to excess” and “unashamedly flashy.
” When considering the Ambani wedding, one can’t help but draw a literary comparison to F Scott Fitzgerald’s , which vividly captures the spirit and complexities of the post-Gilded Age, portraying the lavishness and extravagance of the Roaring Twenties. In contemporary India, MukeshAmbani mirrors John Rockefeller, symbolising immense wealth and influence. Santosh Desai, a cultural commentator, observed, “This trend reflects India, which values grandeur over elegance, where size often precedes quality.
This obsession with scale is evident in the grand monuments erected nationwide. The symbolism of a.