It is a tale of two weddings and a billionaire.
In one of India’s poorest states, Uttar Pradesh, a six-day celebration estimated to cost more than £50-million (about R626-million), started this week for the nuptials of two sons of one of India’s wealthiest men.
The venue is a huge site dominated by a floodlit lake and complete with a London orchestra and a replica of the White House.
The 11 000 guests of the Indian businessman Subrata Roy, founder of the airline-to-banking conglomerate Sahara, include the Indian prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the cricket superstar Sachin Tendulkar, the cream of Bollywood and a few fellow billionaires.
Such is the guest list that Bollywood has postponed filming until the stars, such as Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai, return from the wedding.
”I have never seen anything like it,” one guest said. ”You are sitting by a lake on the edge of which are three palaces — one resembles something out of a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, another is meant to be a Greek temple, and there is a Rajput fort. And of course, there is this lookalike White House. It was like Disneyland on drugs.”
The expected arrival of former US president Bill Clinton, whom Roy counts as a friend, has also caused a stir in the Indian media.
The gathering at the billionaire’s estate, Sahara City, situated in Lucknow, will witness the wedding vows and Hindu marriage rituals of Roy’s two sons: Sushanto and Seemanto. The event ends on Valentine’s day.
”You have to remember that an Indian wedding is a pivot around which family life revolves,” said the BBC’s Sanjeev Srivastava, one of the few reporters to be allowed in. ”But to have the Who’s Who of India in one place shows you how powerful and connected Subrata Roy is”.
Not content with lavishing hospitality on his rich associates and friends, Roy is feeding 140 000 poor people across India for a day and will give the equivalent of £2 000 to 101 local couples who want to marry but cannot afford to do so.
Roy is an enigmatic figure who rarely gives interviews and this ostentatious display of wealth is a rare glimpse into his lifestyle.
The invitations to his sons’ weddings were embossed with the words ”videography, photography and autography are prohibited”. The event is being filmed by one of Bollywood’s top directors.
Now worth £3,7-billion, Sahara started as a rural savings scheme in the poorest parts of India but now dominates the country’s economic landscape with an airline, a TV station, newspapers, a construction arm and a bank with 51-million depositors.
The sports-mad Roy, whose company’s logo is worn by the Indian cricket team, has also been busy building a network of superstars around the world. He recently brought the Russian tennis player Anna Kournikova to Bombay to inaugurate a huge housing complex whose centrepiece is a copy of Buckingham Palace.
Also at the wedding are Olympic gold medal winners Ed Moses, the American hurdler, and the Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci.
To ferry guests, Roy chartered 27 of his company jets whose seats were strewn with orchids and carnations. In-flight entertainment consisted of games where the prizes were bundles of gold coins.
A fleet of 200 Mercedes cars whisked guests from the airport to the wedding. Awaiting them were ”mountains of food” created by chefs specialising in Mexican, Chinese, Lebanese and Indian cuisine.
The garish festivities are set in one of the world’s most penurious places. About 8% of the world’s poor, some 60-million people, live in Uttar Pradesh. Its health and literacy levels rank with the most poverty-stricken African countries.
Roy, who has adopted the state as his home, has recently embarked on a massive house-building spree in Uttar Pradesh.
”The marriages are an emotional function. There has been no assessment of the cost,” said Abhijeet Sarkar, Sahara’s communications head. – Guardian Unlimited Â