Sunday, July 21, 2024

The "How's Life Treating You? Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading a story in my newspaper that was from Mumbai, India.  At first I thought....who would care about what goes on in Mumbai?  Well, the wedding of the second youngest son of Mukesh Ambani, Asia's richest man, is highlighting the billionaire's  staggering wealth and rising clout.  Anand Ambani, 29, is marrying his longtime girlfriend, Rashida Merchant, in what many have dubbed the wedding of the year.  The celebrations were taking place at the Ambani-owned Jio World Convention Centre in Mubai and their family home and are the culmination of months of wedding events that featured performances by pop stars including Rihanna and Justin Bieber.  The four-day wedding celebrations began with a traditional Hindu wedding ceremony, followed by a grand reception that ran through the weekend.  Television news channels showed celebrities like Kim Kardashian and professional wrestler and Hollywood actor John Cana arriving.  Police imposed traffic diversions around the wedding venue from Friday to Monday to handle the influx of guests who were flying into Mumbai, where heavy monsoon rains have caused flooding and flight disruptions for the past week.  Now, I ask you....could that be a sign of what's to come?  Many have questioned the rising inequality in India, where the gap between the rich and the poor is growing.  Seems that traffic is creating a big problem.  "It affects our earnings and I don't care much about the wedding," a taxi driver reported as saying.  The father of the groom, Mukesh Ambani, 67, is the world's ninth-richest man with a new worth of $116 billion, according to Forbes.  He is also the richest person in Asia.  The Ambani family owns, among other assets, a 27-story family compound in Mumbai worth $1 billion.  Ambani's son, Anand, oversees the conglomerate's renewable and green energy expansion.  He also runs a 3,000-acre animal rescue center in Gujarat state's Jamnagar, the family's hometown.  The bride, Rashida Merchant, 20, is the daughter of pharmaceutical tycoon Viren Merchant and is the marketing director for his company, Encore Healthcare, according to Vogue.  Ambani's critics say his company has relied on political connections during Congress party-led governments in the 1970s and '80s and under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's rule after 2014.  The Ambani family's pre-wedding celebrations have been lavish and star-studded.  Would you expect anything else?  Life is good....in some parts of the world, but for some....well,  life just goes on as usual!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

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