The Instagram Betrothal Experience

Splashy drama has always been part and parcel of the big fat Indian wedding. There’s an ever pressing burden not just to walk down the aisle, but to do so in spectacular fashion. However, it’s one thing to dance in a glittering lehenga on a Karan Johar film-inspired set, but entirely another to participate in a cinematically recreated delusion, especially made for Insta. Does honest spontaneity for life’s precious moments count for nothing anymore? Today, the Insta-engagement farce is totally legit, that celebrates a future no one has seen, while the present of the freshly betrothed couple is so fragile and new. It sounds almost old school to say there’s value in protecting the sanctity of one’s private life. To some of us at least, the Insta-brag of intimate details comes across as hopelessly cringe, and shallow.

Somebody needs to drill it into Indian parents’ heads — getting married is not an achievement. It’s a milestone, yes, but that’s about it. Lest I be accused of being an unromantic cynic (having myself agreed to marry in a weak moment on a drunken New Year’s Eve), I genuinely can’t believe an entire generation of affluent Indians need these curated grand gestures to feel validated. The wedding planners are the ones having the last laugh; the “pre-wedding shoot” is an integral part of their package. A beachside proposal in Goa—with props like rose petals showering down, a make-up artist to doll up the bride and some banal monologue lifted from whichever third-rate romance movie is currently trending — can cost upwards of Rs 5 lakh. Agarwal and Siya Goyal were heading to Bali precisely for this sort of picture-perfect shoot when his passport mysteriously went missing, one of the many red flags preceding this tragedy.

The circumstances surrounding Agarwal’s death are a hark-back to sobering Shakespearean wisdom, the famous paradox, fair is foul, and foul is fair. Appearances can be endlessly deceiving. What looks happy and pure may also contain heartbreaking evil. Judging situations based on face value is fraught because we all exist and act out from a headspace of perpetual moral confusion. A modern love triangle serves as a cautionary note to inherent human hypocrisy. It turns out, whatever our decisions, they will come back to haunt us—in this lifetime itself.