JO DARR THA WOHI HO GAYA PAHELI BAAR MAIN RISHI KAPOOR KI SHAADI MEIN SHAAMIL HO NAHI SAKA.. BY ALI PETER JOHN

In my fifty - two year old career, I must have attended countless marriages and marriage receptions , including all the important marriages and receptions in the Kapoor khandaan . But I have never been as scared of attending the marriage of Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt , the children of two of my best friends, Rishi Kapoor and Mahesh Bhatt and their wives , Neetu and Soni Razdan - Ali Peter John

I had stopped attending any kind of public functions , but I decided to make an exception in the case of this most eagerly awaited marriage , the one reason was because I had attended the wedding of Rishi and Neetu and then the wedding of Riddhima and Bharat Sahni

But the fear of God was being driven into me since the last few days when there were reports about the heavy security all around "Vastu" ,the residence and the complex where Ranbir Kapoor has been living ever since his father's bungalow on Pali Hill , "Krishna Raj " was demolished for a multi - storeyed building to come up for his family .

The reports kept talking about two hundred bouncers , the compound of "Vastu" being barricaded by heavy white cloth and personal armed security for every single guest and the staff being asked to seal their phones . This kind of security could scare off even the most hardened criminals , but my affection for the Kapoor khandaan made me take a try.

All the way to the venue if the wedding I had a feeling of something going wrong with my well intended visit and my feeling grew stronger when a leading writer and director who was very close to the Kapoor family and especially to Rishi told me that not only was he not invited , but several old friends of Rishi were not invited and he told me that he was leaving for an unknown destination to avoid the embarrassment of his friends asking him whether he was invited or not .

He told me that his director - friend had even gone into some kind of depression because of his not being invited . There have been many other cases of friends of the Kapoor khandaan not being invited to the marriage of the century .

According to a friend of the family , the family had gone to a secret place to draw up a list of guests , but it was the to be bridegroom who cut off most of the names and restricted the list of guests to only thirty and then to exactly twenty eight guests .

The date and time of the wedding was kept a secret till just one day before the wedding , when Neetu Singh and Riddhima told a section of the media that Ranbir and Alia were getting married at 2 pm on April 14 at "Vastu" . That was the beginning of the grand tussle between the security and the paparazzi and the crowds and at times it looked as if a riot or a war had broken out outside "Vastu"

My well wishers kept requesting me not to proceed towards " Vastu" , but what could I do about the puraana keeda in me ? I marched with my one foot , but all my bravery crumbled when I saw a group of four bouncers approaching me and even the posh car of my friend I had borrowed could not stop them from looking at me as if I was a visitor from some other planet and asking me the kind of questions I have not been asked in all my years.

I could see guests like Karan Johar , Zoya Akhtar , Ayan Mukherjee and some members of the Bhatt family driving towards the venue , but they were the privileged class in their comfortable cars and I was now a nobody who deserved to be in the corner I was in , where my conscience didn't allow me to be for more than five minutes .

I left that corner and asked the driver to drive as fast as he could so that I could return to the realities of my own life . And believe me , u never felt so free and so happy as I reached my cafe and looked at the waves in the sea , two friends who I can always depend on when the world disturbs me , troubles me and inspires me to leave all that is part of this world and fly away to some other world which I hope will be more real and more kind than this cardboard and thermocole world .

SAHIR SAHAB NE SAHI HI KAHA THA SATTAR SAAL PAHELE , " YE DUNIYA AGAR MIL BHI JAAYE TO KYA HAI , JALAA DO JALAA DO , JALAA DO YE DUNIYA , MERE SAAMNE SE HATAA DO YE DUNIYA