Indian Wedding Season =link= ✧ (INSTANT)

She smiled. Put her phone on silent. And walked forward to throw rice at her best friend.

The priest chanted. The fire crackled. Meera’s mother started crying. Riya’s phone buzzed—an invite for wedding number eight, next weekend. indian wedding season

The second was a fusion wedding in a five-star hotel. Dry ice. A drone shot of the couple entering the mandap. A cake that cost more than her first car. Riya wore a silk saree that kept unraveling. She spent forty-five minutes pinned between a cousin who kept asking when she was getting married and an aunt who reeked of expensive whiskey. She smiled

The third, fourth, and fifth blurred together. Sangeet nights bled into mehendi afternoons. The same DJ. The same playlist. The same three songs that made every aunty rush to the dance floor. By the sixth wedding, Riya had developed a philosophical theory: the Indian wedding season wasn’t a celebration. It was a endurance sport. The priest chanted

Meera was sitting under a canopy of red and gold, her hands covered in intricate henna, her eyes lined with kohl and exhaustion and joy. She wasn’t looking at the priest. She was looking at the groom—a quiet, kind-eyed man who kept adjusting his sehra nervously. And he was looking back at her.

It was her childhood best friend, Meera. The wedding was in a small town near Varanasi. Riya drove six hours through fog so thick it felt like driving through a bowl of milk. She arrived at 2 AM. The wedding was at 8 AM.

For three months, the air in Lucknow didn’t just smell of winter—it smelled of shaadi . By late November, the smog had lifted just enough for the marquees to go up. Overnight, every vacant lot, every lawn, every hotel ballroom transformed into a temporary kingdom of marigolds and crystal chandeliers.