It is,” said my wife, “most inconsiderate of your parents to be celebrating their sixtieth wedding anniversary,” which I knew isn’t exactly what she meant to say, since it wasn’t the longevity of their marriage she was grumbling about as much as the date, which coincides, unfortunately, with the monster of all wedding receptions and which is where everyone from Delhi appears to be headed — invited or not. The way society has been planning for it, you’d think they were all family, though they might never have set eyes on the groom outside of his page three pictures. “That, darling, is what I’m going to wear to the wedding,” upwardly mobile fashionistas have been preening while booking up everything from jewellery to couture, providing designers with a bigger boost than even Diwali.
It’s a wedding people have been looking forward to not just because it will separate the arriviste from the wannabe, but because it’s also a story that could so easily have been tragic. Five years ago, the suave and extremely good looking Shivraj Singh, heir to the fortunes of Jodhpur, was critically hurt in a freak polo accident. Even then, speculation about his marriage had been the stuff of society gossip — he was marrying a senior minister’s daughter; no silly, he was engaged to some international diva; tut-tut, he was settling for an arranged alliance with a princess from a major royal family — but now it all ceased. His injuries had confined him to bed, specialists from all over the world were treating him, his mother had pledged to walk bare feet to seek divine blessings at all the family shrines, and soon he disappeared not just from the society pages but also from its collective memory.
But neither his family, nor Shivraj himself, had given up — he fought off paralysis by forcing himself to walk, to swim and exercise; he battled the loss of his short-term memory by insisting on attending business meetings; in not letting go, he refused to succumb to the confines of the bed, and so when he weds next month, it will not just be his personal triumph but one that all of Jodhpur and royal India have been looking for. His father’s hospitality and generosity have won him many admirers, and from around the world they will descend — friends, but also celebrities straight out of the pages of Vogue and Hello! and Vanity Fair. While the marriage itself will be conducted in Jaipur, it is the post-wedding celebrations in Jodhpur that have everyone in a thrall.
“There’ll be a procession,” invitees are taking their fitness programmes somewhat seriously, “all the way to the fort”, which, for those who’ve been to Mehrangarh will know, requires a strenuous walk uphill, made all the more difficult because of their jewelled robes and high stilettos. It also makes the job for wedding crashers somewhat easy — just slip in with the glitterati and culturati and who’s to know the difference? The entertainment is to be a mix of the local and international — has Sting been invited as performer or guest? — the banquets overlooking the glittering city promise to make anything else gone before resemble nothing more than a bazaar feast, and you can bet there’ll be more blue-bloods power-packing the corridors of Umaid Bhawan Palace those few days than there were at the Riviera this entire summer.
“It’s so unreasonable that your parents want to celebrate their anniversary on the day they were married,” said my wife grumpily. “I know you’re unhappy about missing the Jodhpur bash,” I commiserated, “but does it really matter so much?” “It’s not skipping it that bothers me,” sighed my wife, “as much as all these fake society-wallahs sniggering that they’re attending what we weren’t even invited for in the first place.”