Four and half years and at least 30 weddings later (I like the way that sounds hehe), I’m convinced the profession to be is wedding planning. Especially if you live in Delhi like I do. If you're a wedding planner, you make money, you are never short of business and you are constantly in demand. What more could a girl want?

Last Sunday was the famous 14,000 weddings day here. But I kept thinking what the fuss was all about? They had a similar day last year when there were 14000 plus weddings. And they'll have one next year. This time, the TV channels had more story ideas though. One of them, Star Plus I think, had a 15-minute ‘news’ report on the ladkiwalas and the ladkawalas. It was nothing but filmi style antakshari. I couldn’t believe my ears. This was news? And to think in my reporting days I was blasted by the RE for doing a ‘fluffy-piece’ on chairs painted by MF Husain?

Perhaps you can’t blame TV journos for going overboard when the shaadis are over the top. Nobody does them on a small scale anymore. It’s a farmhouse or nothing. Even in freezing winter, which thankfully hasn’t arrived yet. One farmhouse wedding I went to this time had waiters dressed like Arab sheikhs for some strange reason. Perhaps it was to distract the kids who kept chasing them around. The fake Sheikh sight momentarily cheered me up with the thought that perhaps the food was Arabic but no such luck. The wedding day is strictly vegetarian. This is one time I miss Bong weddings. Never mind the topor*.

But the funniest wedding I attended was last year. Again in a farmhouse closer to Jaipur than to Delhi. Again overcrowded. Again 40 different food stalls, all of which were being attacked by very fat men and women wearing all their jewellery. Again a wedding where I only saw the bride and groom on a huge TV screen they had put up at the venue. But the icing on the cake was two revolving platforms flanking the entrance. On one stood a gleaming big black car tied with a huge blue bow, a placard on it bearing the legend: ‘From Mr XYZ To His Loving New Son.’ The other platform had similar gleaming car, though not so big (for the girl, silly) and not black, tied with a pink bow and the placard: ‘From Mr XYZ To His Lovely daughter.’ I almost thought I’d entered a contest by mistake.

But why blame just Delhi?

Last year, some newspaper tycoon's daughter got married in Bhopal and they actually printed a mini-tabloid with all the wedding news!
And years ago, when I was a gawky student in Bombay, we attended a classmate's wedding. The venue was Turf Club. We were showered with petals as we walked in. Thinking we had died and gone to heaven, we looked up to find two poor souls dressed and positioned like Hindi movie apsaras (Think Raj Kapoor films) on two podiums. All set to start showering petals the moment a guest entered. Heavenly no?

*Topor=Strange conical hatlike thing worn by Bengali grooms. Must’ve been invented by some jilted woman.