Marriage, on one hand, is a beautiful celebration of love and commitment between two people, while on the other hand, the ostentatious display of wealth made me reflect on the disparity that exists in our society. I was shocked to see such an extravagant wastage of wealth during recent marriages that spread into months of celebrations where money flowed in barrels and streams. These events often highlight the stark contrast between the haves and have-nots, making it feel like a display of wealth rather than a celebration of devotion and dedication. The contrast between rich and poor in our country is quite evident. The poor have no food to eat; the rich have food to waste. We are a country of paradoxes. Do we really need to splurge crores and crores on a single event? Such expensive weddings! It becomes more of a circus than a social function. It is an infuriating display of wealth. The contrast of glitz and glamour to abject poverty couldn’t be more profound.

Indian weddings have turned into ostentatious and meaningless affairs. It’s all about outdoing others or doing what others have done. Weddings have become spectacles of the most absurd kind. Everyone deserves a special wedding day but this does not mean a gaudy show. On a social media platform, I read about a news item doing the rounds-the heart-warming story of a Turkish couple Fethullah Uzumcuoglu and Esra Polat, who had celebrated their wedding day with 4000 Syrian refugees in 2015. Instead of having an exclusive and extravagant wedding in a luxurious way they decided to share their joy and a meal with displaced refugees. What a great way of thinking and doing something meaningful during one’s milestone event! India is a country where most people cannot afford two square meals a day, where children die of starvation as a matter of routine, and where simple health care is missing over large areas, where the women cannot afford another sari to change till the one she had worn earlier gets dried. About half of under-five Indian children are malnourished. Food grains for the poor can be preserved by restricting its use at extravagant and luxurious social functions. Quite ironically, the ‘imported guests’, who call India as a country of paupers, don’t hesitate to sing, and dance and collect crores of rupees on that very soil.

No doubt these rich classes provide food to orphanages, to villagers and needy during festivities. But what percent of their wealth is spent on philanthropy is to be pondered over. We all know of the parable of the old woman in The Bible. Many rich people had put large sums of money in the church plate for God. The poor widow of the village came along and put two small copper coins.

As a widow, the woman would have had no source of income after her husband’s death. Therefore, the two copper coins were all that she had—yet she offered them to God. The rich, on the other hand, had a lot of money to spare. So, what they offered to God was just loose change, money they did not depend on. The widow was declared by God as the richest lady as her gesture was an act of perfect love and sacrifice. We have the starkest examples of income inequality in the world.

Of late, Indian weddings have become a joke in itself where the winner loses and makes the other look like losers. The Indian wedding industry specially catered to the stinking rich shows how bloated it is. The event is not extravagant and expensive by itself but it is made so by people.

The extravagance is a kind of mockery, a sort of blindness to the reality of the country. The show of wealth and the presence of ‘who’s who’ is often described as ‘obscene and naked display of wealth’.

Most schools of thought and most of us focus defining ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Honestly nobody can tell you what is morally high or low. It is only the mystical creature in you, ‘The Conscience’ that tells you about being ethically right or wrong. Conscience is a powerful thing—it can make us rethink our choices and make a positive impact. When we put ourselves in other’s shoes, it changes our perspective and helps us make more compassionate choices and make a positive impact. Let conscience guide you.

Choose compassion over extravagance!