TIED UP IN KNOTS

The pandemic has put the big fat Indian wedding industry on a drastic diet

- Shreevatsa Nevatia

Sambit Dattachaudhuri, 30, and Disha Kapkoti, 28, are not ones to be defeated by a pandemic. Despite Covid-19, the couple are busy checking items on their 2020 to-do list. The homestay they had planned to open in Uttarakhand’s Nathuakhan recently welcomed its first guests, but, more significantly, Dattachaudhuri and Kapkoti were able to get married in Kapkoti’s Haldwani home on July 1. “My parents live in Kolkata, so they could attend the ceremony only virtually. None of my friends were there, but I was represented by the two dogs we adopted,” laughs Dattachaudhuri. The number of guests on Zoom far outnumbered the 25 relatives physically present. The neighbourhood caterer was hired and the plates used were all disposable. “We followed due protocol,” says Dattachaudhuri.

For India’s wedding market—once valued at $50 billion by auditing firm KPMG—impromptu “Zoom weddings” such as those of Dattachaudhuri only compound the losses the pandemic has forced it to incur. Ankit Singh, a Bengaluru-based wedding photographer, has barely found work since India started locking down in March, but, of late, he has heard that some colleagues are shooting again. “Some of these weddings happen in large halls. The 50-odd people attending are wearing masks, being civil, but in smaller living rooms, uncles aged 65-70 have been seen distributing and eating laddoos.”