Diksha Basu invites all in Destination Wedding

Aradhika Sharma

This is the story of Tina, a 32-year-old Brooklyn girl and daughter of affluent expatriate (divorced) parents. She wants “to feel Indian. Really Indian.” She wants to know the real India, not the swanky, upmarket version presented to her on her visits to her home country.

Tina is a part of the upwardly mobile New York Indian community that can afford to dash around the world in business class, wear designer clothes, carry branded accessories and be entertained at the most expensive joints. We meet her first as she waits for her flight to Delhi in the airport lounge accompanied by her friend. Travelling on the same flight are Tina’s mother, Radha, along with her boyfriend, David, and her father, Neel.

The Manhattan-ness of the protagonist is established in the first few pages, somewhat setting the stage for her conflict that unfolds later in the book regarding which India does she belong to: the ‘real’ India or the ‘American’ India.

The book is an extravagant narrative of India seen through Tina’s eyes. Although Basu tries to bring out the contradictions that constitute the Indian socio-cultural landscape, hers is an extremely western vision.

The book is based in upper class Delhi, where Tina’s cousin Shefali is getting married to Pavan. The flamboyant bunch of relatives and over-the-top wedding festivities prompt Tina to make a reality show on the big, fat Indian wedding and what goes into transforming the nuptials into a mega event, at the centre stage of which are the bride and the groom. To do so, she teams up with the ambitious wedding planner Bubbles Trivedi. The premise of the show is to turn Bubble’s life into a reality show.

The readers are thereafter treated to the extravagant details of a society wedding — parties at farmhouses, ceremonies at heritage destinations, premium food and wines, designer clothes and jewellery, bachelorette parties…

Though the novel is breezy and undoubtedly escapist, Basu is always humane. And she’s funny. Her characters, though privileged, indulge in some introspection from time to time and a sense of conflict, though not of an existentialist nature, does emerge as topics of belongingness, love, relationship and conservatism vs modernity come up. An interesting facet of the book lies in the characters who get a second chance at love as some of Basu’s important characters include people who are no longer young but are willing to invest in new relationships.

Destination Wedding is a nice, feel-good book to snuggle into on a rainy day, especially in these days when ‘feeling good’ is of utmost importance.