Anant Ambani's $150 million wedding: Gandhi and socialism are just a memory

It goes without saying that with this background there is a certain curiosity as to how the ceremony will take place. The 'setting', as they say in these cases, does not promise to be particularly 'impressive' since the whole thing will take place in the convention centre of Reliance, the family business. It must be said, however, that when you invite 1,200 people, the charme hotel is not a viable option.

In addition to the predictable array of ceos, ministers and Bollywood stars, a couple of former British prime ministers may also attend, and Adele may take the stage, it is rumoured (certainly not Beyoncé who would be déjà vu as she has already sung at the wedding of the groom's sister).

What is certain is that, as a fact of custom, the Mumbai wedding tells a few things.

For instance, that the season when the Indian upper middle class carefully avoided displaying their wealth can be said to be dead and buried. Perhaps it was a matter of elegance, of education, of good taste. Perhaps instead it was just a way of not bothering a policy that for decades, after independence from the British Crown, had always had a greater affinity with the socialist bloc than with the capitalist West.

And today, at least from that point of view, things have changed a lot.

Not a week goes by without Prime Minister Narendra Modi - to whom the Ambani are very close - reminding us how far India has come. Explaining that it is now the fifth largest economy on the planet and how within a few years it is destined to become the third largest behind the United States and China (from there onwards, further overtaking, if any, will have to wait).

The PM's goal is to make India a developed country by 2047, when 100 years since independence will have passed. No one doubts that in terms of GDP a marriage that is estimated to have cost$150 million will make its contribution. But when a country continues to host one-third of the malnourished children on the planet, it is hard not to feel a (irrational, for goodness sake) twinge of nostalgia for the frugal black-and-white India of a few decades ago.