When Sonakshi Pratap and Malhar Lakdawala, both 30 and based out of Mumbai, tied the knot last weekend in Mahabaleshwar, Maharashtra, they decided to discard the rule book for traditional Hindu weddings and just do their own thing. “We decided to split the wedding into two parts, because of COVID-19. The first day, with just 50 people from both sides of the family, we had a Hindu wedding, but without the archaic rituals that are so patriarchal.
Then the next two days we had our friends over and did something very different,” says Sonakshi, who along with Malhar, has always been very passionate about issues like gender equality. To begin with, Sonakshi eschewed the typical practices of mehendi, sindur, and the mangalsutra, all indicative of the subservience of Hindu brides to their husbands.