Foreign News
The marathon Indian wedding turning heads around the world
How much is too much?
That’s the question many in India are asking as the months-long wedding festivities for the youngest son of Asia’s richest man enter their final phase.
The celebrations are expected to culminate this weekend when Anant Ambani, the youngest son of Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, ties the knot with Radhika Merchant, daughter of pharma tycoons Viren and Shaila Merchant.
There have been four months of lavish events leading up to the wedding itself. All the glamourous outfits, stunning jewellery, fairytale-like decor and rare performances by Indian and global stars have been the focus of much public attention.
“It is nothing short of a royal wedding,” says writer and columnist Shobhaa De. “Our billionaires are the new Indian maharajahs. Their shareholders expect nothing less than a mega extravaganza.”
Indians “have always loved pomp and pageantry – just like the British”, she says, adding that “the scale [of the wedding] is in keeping with the Ambani wealth”.
But the hullabaloo around the wedding has drawn as much ire as public fascination. Many have criticised the opulence and the sheer magnitude of wealth on display in a country where tens of millions live below the poverty line and where income equality is extreme.
“The wedding can easily be seen as a kind of a mockery, a sort of blindness to the reality of the country at one level. At another level, however ridiculous this might be, it is still in keeping with the grossly distorted, almost grotesque bloating of Indian weddings in the last decade or so,” writer and commentator Santosh Desai tells the BBC.
“It is part of a larger shift that is taking place. A generation or two ago, wealth was spoken of in whispers. Today, wealth must speak as loudly as possible. Even then, the scale of this wedding makes it an outlier.”
With a sprawling business empire – ranging from oil, telecoms, chemicals, technology and fashion to food – the Ambanis are a ubiquitous presence in India and their lives are the subject of intense public fascination.
Mr Ambani’s personal fortune is estimated at a staggering $115bn (£90bn). Anant, 29, holds a position on the Reliance Industries board of directors.
Ambani senior, along with fellow Indian business tycoon Gautam Adani, is reported to be close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, with opposition parties accusing the authorities of unduly favouring the two business houses – accusations both the government and the businessmen deny.
While the Ambani family’s enormous wealth and clout are well known in India, many outside the country may not have realised the extent of their riches until now.
That changed in March, when Mr Ambani hosted a three-day pre-wedding party for his son.
The festivities were held in the family’s hometown Jamnagar in the western state of Gujarat, which is also the location of Mr Ambani’s oil refinery – the largest in the world. Some 1,200 guests attended, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.
The party began with a dinner held inside a glasshouse especially built for the occasion. The stunning structure reportedly resembles Palm House, a crystalline Victorian-style building located in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, which was a favourite of Ms Merchant when she was a college student in New York City.
The feast was followed by a performance by Rihanna and viral videos showed the Ambani family grooving with the popstar on stage. If people hadn’t been paying attention, they definitely were now.
Through it all, dozens of speciality chefs served some 2,000 dishes, carefully curated from around the world, to guests lodged in luxury tents, with personal makeup artists and stylists at their service.
There was also a 10-page manual on the dress code for the events, which included a “jungle fever” theme for a visit to a family-owned animal sanctuary, followed by a Moulin Rouge-themed “house party” held at the sprawling grounds of their palatial residence.
The bride-to-be wore a number of specially crafted outfits, including two lehngas (long bridal silk skirts) – one studded with 20,000 Swarovski crystals and another that reportedly took 5,700 hours to make – and a pink version of a Versace dress that actor Blake Lively wore to the 2022 Met Gala.
The groom mostly wore Dolce & Gabbana outfits and flaunted a Richard Mille wristwatch, worth an estimated $1.5m. A viral video of Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan gawking at the watch went viral in India.
Newspapers and websites perfectly captured the opulence of these dazzling events, attended by the glitterati from around the world. “It was almost like the time of maharajahs 100 years down the line,” the New York Times reported.
There was also backlash after India’s government overnight designated the city’s small airport into an international airport, expanded its staff and deployed military and air force personnel in service of the family.
The final night of the three-day jamboree, which ended with a shower of confetti, fireworks and a lightshow, set the tone for what was to come next.
In June, the couple and their guests took their pre-wedding celebrations overseas, literally. The party, which included top Bollywood stars, embarked on a luxury cruise along the stunning azure coastline of the Tyrrhenian Sea in Italy, to the French Mediterranean.
They stopped in Rome, Portofino, Genoa and Cannes for late-night revelry that reportedly brought complaints from local people.
This time, the celebrations had performances by 90s teen heartthrobs The Backstreet Boys, singer Katy Perry and Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.
This week, yet another set of wedding celebrations kicked off on the family’s home turf, Mumbai, with a performance by Justin Bieber.
A video of him singing at the edge of the stage as the bride and her friends sing along has been viewed 38 million times. It shows ecstatic women in sequined gowns and saris as they punch their fists skyward in glee. The crowd doesn’t miss a beat to Bieber’s verse: You should go and love yourself.
The scale of the celebrations show that nothing is out of reach for the family. And there is speculation that Adele could be performing at the actual wedding this weekend – the family, however, are tight-lipped.
Of course, India isn’t a stranger to the concept of big fat weddings – the country is the largest spender on marriage ceremonies after the US.
Tina Tharwani, co-founder of the Shaadi Squad, says in recent years, there’s been a noticeable trend where weddings have become larger-than-life events that veer towards excessiveness, driven by societal expectations, competitive displays of status, and a desire to create memorable moments.
So, we’ve seen expensive weddings routinely make headlines in recent years, such as this $74mwedding in 2016.
Other Ambani children have also had lavish pre-wedding festivities. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry were among attendees at Isha Ambani’s pre-wedding bash in 2018, which featured a performance by Beyoncé. A year later, Akash Ambani’s pre-wedding bash featured a performance by Coldplay.
When it comes to scale, though, this is the mother of all weddings, says Ashwini Arya, owner of an event management company that has managed weddings in 14 countries.
“It’s like the bible for the industry with the best of logistics, tech, design and grandeur.
“You’re talking about preparations of a minimum of two years, multiple recce trips, approvals and permissions from several countries, along with the logistics of arranging security and transport for some of the biggest personalities of the world,” he says.
The Ambanis have not revealed how much this wedding is costing them but Mr Arya estimates that they have already spent nywhere between 11bn and 13bn rupees [$132m-$156m]. It was rumoured Rihanna had been paid $7m (£5.5m) for her performance, while the figure suggested for Bieber is $10m.
Money was also lavished on constructing 14 temples inside a sprawling complex in Jamnagar to showcase India’s cultural heritage and provide a backdrop for the wedding. As part of the celebrations, the Ambanis hosted a mass wedding for 50 underprivileged couples too.
It’s being said the family pulled out all the stops because with all the Ambani children married, this would be their last wedding for the foreseeable future.
But with each event, public criticism of the celebration in India has grown – from people aghast at the massive jewels worn by Nita Ambani to exasperation and anger among Mumbai residents over traffic restrictions in a city already struggling with traffic jams and monsoon flooding.
For India’s wedding industry though, it’s still an exciting marketing opportunity.
This is an excellent chance for designers to showcase the more refined side of India’s couture, artistry and craftsmanship, says Anand Bhushan, a fashion designer. That said, the frequency, with celebrities changing five-six outfits per event can sometimes feel a “little saturating”, he admits.
Ms Tharwani says the wedding serves as “an exemplary case” of orchestrating a multi-event, multi-location celebration “that combines tradition, modernity, and unmatched hospitality standards”.
Meanwhile, in Mumbai, Varindar Chawla, one of Bollywood’s best-known paparazzi, is sifting through the photographs of the celebrations.
There are a few of celebrities posing at the entrance as they arrive to attend the various events.
Each one of these pictures – even the unflattering ones, such as of a star looking stunned as the glare of a camera-flash hits them in the face – has been fetching millions of views and shares.
“Usually it’s hard to penetrate events of this scale. But this family has gone out of the way to ensure we are there to cover every little detail,” he says.
“It’s a royal wedding and we are getting a royal treatment.”
[BBC]
A South Korean court has sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to 30 years in jail for sending drones into North Korea.
Prosecutors argued that Yoon ordered the operation in October 2024 to provoke Pyongyang and create a pretext for his failed martial law bid later that year.
When Yoon declared martial law on 3 December, he had claimed he was protecting the country from “anti-state” forces that sympathised with North Korea. But it soon became clear he was driven by domestic troubles and he rolled back the order in the face of mass protests.
Yoon was impeached and is now serving time in prison after he was sentenced to life for insurrection over his botched martial law attempt.
On Friday, the Seoul District Court found Yoon, as well as his former defense minister Kim Yong-hyun, former head of the Defense Counterintelligence Command Yeo In-hyung and former head of Drone Operations Commands Kim Yong-dae guilty of treason and abuse of power.
Kim was sentenced to 30 years in jail, while Yeo received 15 years and Kim Yong-dae received three years in prison with a five-year suspended sentence.
“The defendants used the guise of a military operation to induce provocations from North Korea with the aim of creating a state of emergency,” the court said.
It added that all three officials had “provoked North Korea”, thus “increasing the risk of a military conflict”, but concluded that Yoon bore the “greatest responsibility” in this event.
Yoon’s lawyers had argued that his actions were a “legitimate” response to North Korea’s “provocations with rubbish balloons”.
This was a reference to North Korea dropping hundreds of balloons in 2024, which were later found to contain “filthy waste and trash”, across the border in the South.
The two countries have used such “propaganda balloons” in their campaigns since the Korean War, where messages are put inside the balloons.
But tensions shot up in 2024 when North Korea accused the South of flying drones into its capital. These drones allegedly scattered propaganda leaflets all over Pyongyang, in what the North described as a provocation that could lead to war.
It was Yoon who sent these drones into the North expecting it to strike back, said a judge in Friday’s ruling.
Apart from insurrection, Yoon has was also sentenced to five years in jail for abuse of power and obstructing his own arrest.
Yoon’s martial law attempt and the protests that followed created months of chaos in the country, ending in an election which saw the opposition Democratic Party’s Lee Jae-myung win a decisive mandate.
[BBC]
US police are investigating a large imprint of the numbers 8-6-4-7 that were apparently drawn in the grass of the National Mall in Washington DC.
“Eighty-six” is a slang term for “get rid of”, and Trump administration officials claim that the numbers are meant to encourage violence against Trump, the 47th president.
US Park Police “responded to a report of vandalism” at around 11:30ET (16:30GMT) on Thursday morning, the agency said in a statement.
“The cause of the discoloration has not yet been determined. Grass samples have been collected for testing. The investigation is ongoing.”
Images of the grass show the numbers 8, 6 and 7, but the number 4 is not clearly visible.
The investigation comes as US prosecutors attempt to jail the former director of the FBI for a social media post in which the numbers were seen written on a beach in sea shells.
James Comey is facing multiple charges related to an alleged threat to kill Trump. He has denied the charges and called the prosecution politically-motivated.
The numbers have been used by opponents of Trump, and have appeared at protests against his administration.
The slogan written in the grass appears somewhat faded, with the number 8 appearing more prominently than the others. It is located close to the World War 2 memorial.
The alleged vandalism comes amid a beautification campaign of US monuments in the city, led by Trump. The campaign includes $13.1m (£9.6m) to repaint the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, as well as a plan to build an arch decorated with golden figures including lions and eagles.
[BBC]
A cleaning team was combing Mount Everest’s perilous upper slopes for rubbish last Thursday, after a busy climbing season, when they spotted a man in a bright blue summit suit crawling at the foot of the Khumbu Icefall, widely regarded as one of the most dangerous sections of the world’s highest peak.
It was Hillary Dawa Sherpa, a climbing guide who got separated from his clients when descending the mountain six days earlier. He had been presumed dead – yet another life claimed by Everest’s treacherous slopes. By the time the 57-year-old reappeared, his family had already begun funeral rites for him.
Although frostbitten and thoroughly spent, Hillary Dawa could still sit upright and talk to those who found him, before he was airlifted to a hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital.
News of his miraculous survival made international headlines and sent shockwaves throughout the mountaineering community.
However, it also raises troubling questions for the booming high-altitude tourism industry, and shines a spotlight on the deadly risks Sherpas who work on Mount Everest face.
Himalayan Traverse Adventure (HTA), the company that Hillary Dawa was working for, maintains that all its processes in handling the incident were above board, and that poor weather hampered rescue efforts
But many are asking whether the company, known for offering packages below market rates, has done enough to look after their guides.
Hillary Dawa was hired as a camp cook – why then was he leading clients up the 8,849m (29,032ft) mountain? Why was a search launched only three days after he disappeared, and would it have begun sooner if he had been a client and not a guide?
The Sherpa’s family has filed a police report accusing HTA of negligence, and Nepal’s tourism department is investigating the incident.
Disaster at 7,500m
HTA had initially employed Hillary Dawa as a cook to be stationed at Camp 2, but ended up using him as a substitute for a guide who “fell sick at Base Camp”, the company said.
He took up the spontaneous change in assignment because he “wanted to earn some extra money”, HTA manager Angfurba Sherpa tells the BBC.
That’s how Hillary Dawa ended up accompanying two clients, British climber Chris Thrall and Polish climber Mariusz Chmielewski on his ill-fated trek up Mount Everest. Also with them was fellow guide Pasang Kaji Sherpa.
On the southern route to Everest there are four camps established above the main Base Camp, which climbers typically use as resting and acclimatisation points. Camp 4, which sits at 7,920m above sea level, is the highest.
The group started their descent from Camp 4 on 29 May, with Pasang Kaji and Chmielewski going first, as Chmielewski was running out of oxygen.
Thrall, who followed behind with Hillary Dawa, said the Sherpa had stopped to sit on his backpack just above Camp 3, at around 7,500m, “as he had done hundreds of times before to take a short rest”.
“I turned around and said, ‘Hillary, are you okay brother?'” Thrall recounted in a video on Instagram. “He says, ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine Chris, please go.'”
The former British soldier described his dilemma of whether to turn back for Hillary Dawa or catch up with the rest.
“Do I go back for the Sherpa who’s probably going to rock up and be fine as he has done hundreds of times before, or do I help my fellow climber who’s got no oxygen, frostbite in his fingers, and obviously, you’re never far off hypothermia up there?”
Responding to allegations that the team had left Hillary Dawa behind to die, Thrall said: “It’s really different on Everest, folks. I had one tank of oxygen that’s half empty [by then].
“To try to get back up… would have taken pretty much all of my oxygen. I’m not trying to offload my responsibility. I’m just saying you’ve got to be real.”
In a subsequent interview with BBC Newshour, Thrall said he decided to “turn to the weakest member of the trio”, referring to Chmielewski, with whom he shared his dwindling supply of oxygen as they continued down the mountain amid a severe snowstorm.
The conditions were so bad that Thrall and Chmielewski both recorded farewell messages for their loved ones, thinking they may not make it back alive.
The group took some 38 hours to finally arrive at Base Camp. At this point, they had assumed Hillary Dawa was dead.
“It was a complete whiteout,” Thrall said. “All the ropes were a foot under snow… In none of the time when I looked back up the mountain did I see any sign of Hillary.”
Chmielewski, meanwhile, has also accused HTA of negligence.
“Look, Hillary Dawa was left alone; he rescued himself,” Chmielewski tells the BBC. “This shows the sad truth about how Himalayan Traverse regards its employees. Customers are treated similarly.”
Chmielewski claims that Pasang Kaji Sherpa, the other mountain guide in their group, had notified the company on 30 May that Hillary Dawa was missing, but that no search operation was launched until days later.
Chmielewski, who was also admitted to hospital with frostbite, further suggests that decisions were made haphazardly during the expedition, and that the company appeared unprepared.
“I have huge reservations about the agency that organised this expedition,” he says. “I think they should lose their licence.”
Hillary Dawa maintains he was “forced to stay behind” near Camp 3, which sits about 7,200m above sea level, because he had run out of oxygen and could no longer walk.
Without supplemental oxygen, a fully acclimatised climber would typically survive only two to three days at that altitude.
“I couldn’t walk… I didn’t eat anything for the first two days. Then I began chewing ice, but it pained my teeth,” Hillary Dawa told BBC Nepali from HAMS Hospital in Kathmandu. “I didn’t think I would be alive.”
Then he discovered chocolates in his pocket, and managed to get some melted ice to drink.
He made his way down slowly, only to fall into a crevasse, according to two people who spoke to him about his ordeal.
Then, an avalanche that sent snow tumbling into the crevasse gave him the first hope he had had in days.
“Stepping on the snow, I stood up and looked above… It felt like I could get out from there,” he said.
Once he scrambled out, he found ropes nearby that helped him manoeuvre further down. It was there he saw the cleaning team, the first people he had encountered in almost a week.
Hillary Dawa was transferred from the intensive care unit to a general ward early this week and is “recovering well”, his family tells BBC Nepali.
HTA’s founder and president Dawa Sherpa said that when his company had realised on 30 May that Hillary Dawa was uncontactable, it had notified its partner, 8K Expeditions, the larger expedition company that helped issue Thrall and Chmielewski’s climbing permits.
“The search operation was delayed solely due to adverse weather conditions, but it does not mean there was negligence,” he tells the BBC.
“The weather was really bad, it was a whiteout, meaning we had deep snow continually for a few days. It wouldn’t have been possible to send a helicopter immediately. I would have been sending the rescuers to die.”
Dawa adds that 8K Expeditions should be the company executing the rescue, because they were the ones who issued the permits, but 8K Expeditions maintains it was not responsible for providing the logistics or operational services for this particular expedition.
“Nevertheless, as part of our responsibility and commitment to supporting the mountaineering community, we did our best to assist in the search,” the company’s managing director, Lakpa Sherpa, tells the BBC.
Lakpa confirmed that HTA had indeed made first contact on 30 May, but later fell off the radar. HTA did not respond to these claims.
“We attempted multiple times to contact Himalayan Traverse Adventure for further information and co-ordination,” Lakpa says. “However, they were unreachable… On 2 June, we established contact with Hillary’s family and co-ordinated an aerial search operation.”
That search came up empty.
8K Expeditions has called Hillary Dawa’s ordeal a “true self-rescue” and “nothing short of a miracle”.
Everest experts say camp cooks are rarely equipped to scale the mountain.
“Generally, local guides that take clients to the summit of 8,000m peaks are trained specifically for this purpose,” says Ben Ayers, a longtime Everest reporter for Outside Magazine.
“Hillary Dawa had experience working in this capacity in previous years, but he was late in his career.”
Chmielewski, the Polish climber, says HTA told them Hillary Dawa was re-assigned as a climbing guide “because their original guide had drinking problems and a health problem”.
“We weren’t told exactly what it was,” he tells the BBC.
In a second call with the BBC, HTA manager Angfurba claims the two clients did not want to pay the additional cost for a more experienced guide after their original one was removed.
Thrall and Chmielewski each paid about $37,500 (about £28,000) for the expedition, which includes an attempt up Everest and the 6,189m Island Peak, Angfurba explains.
“They paid one of the cheapest prices and yet they expect VIP service,” he says, adding that other companies charge six-figure sums for similar trips.
Chmielewski dismissed this comment as “absurd and outrageous”. The climbers paid an additional “several thousand dollars” expecting a qualified climbing guide, he says, but Hillary Dawa was put on the job “due to a lack of personnel”.
Angfurba also suggests that Hillary Dawa should have established contact to let the company know he was still alive.
“He had a functioning walkie talkie with extra batteries,” Angfurba says. “It would have taken 10 seconds.”
Hillary Dawa’s family and friends, however, argue that the Sherpa was abandoned. As he recovers in hospital, they demand that justice be served to those accountable.
“I believe this problem occurred because they took him as a cook but used him as a guide,” his longtime friend Pasang Dawa Sherpa told BBC Nepali.
“Our main question is: why wasn’t a search initiated right after he got trapped? We want to know why there was such negligence.”
[BBC]
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