Indian weddings have always been events with elaborate rituals, traditions and extravagant pomp and show with families and friends bonding together, brides and grooms trying to look their best on the big day of judgment. Fun, frolic and food happens to be the bottom line through all the days which a wedding events goes on, with each day dedicated to a specific ritual.

I remember the days, not too long ago, when the weddings were about meeting people, pulling all-nighters sitting and chatting with the loved ones and reliving memories from childhood, endless rants and bitchings and rebuilding the long lost relations. The point is, things were so simpler and so much fun, enjoyments were pure, people met each other with all their heart when they danced, sang and participated in the plethora of rituals lined up all through the days and weeks. Everything felt so personally attached.

But how the things have changed now, with the new generation taking up the charge and making the events all about how it would look through the cameras for social media posts rather than caring about the raw entertainment which people look up for. Every move, pose, walks and even conversations look so scripted.

The grooms and brides themselves look more like event managers coordinating every moves or their friends and family so that the battalion of cameramen could capture Gigabytes full of Insta-worthy pictures. The haldi ceremonies have become a scene from a big budget bollywood movie. The day of sangeet now feels like some annual function of our schools and organisations. Even the marriage ceremony seems to be a setting straight out of some fairy tale book.

I am not saying all of these are wrong. Maybe this is how things change through generations, but what I want to put out is that things don’t feel personal anymore. Everything has become so cosmetic and made up. The innocence is lost, the interpersonal connects are no longer genuine.

I am attending one such wedding as I write and I am craving so much for the good old style of celebration where people don’t worry about how they look, they don’t have to follow specific instructions about how to make an entry, no one cares how one danced. All that mattered was how much fun the gathered lot is having. I genuinely worry that the generations to come would no longer get to know the real enjoyment of an Indian wedding and everything will be lost to competition of accumulating Likes, Shares and Comments in social media platforms…