Smriti-Palash wedding cancellation shows how brutal life is for public figures: Is it fair game?

Dubai: Weddings fall apart for a dozen reasons — illness, bad timing, rogue bridesmaids, or plain logistical chaos. If it happens in any of our families, sure, the neighbourhood WhatsApp aunties will feast. But rarely does the world circle like vultures, hungry for humiliation. When close family members are hospitalised, most couples are given the dignity of grieving in private. Composer Palaash Muchhal and cricket star Smriti Mandhana weren’t afforded even that.

The moment Palak Muchhal announced the postponement, the wedding stopped being a personal event and became public entertainment. A media circus rolled into town, drip-feeding a voyeuristic audience. Health updates were flattened into “alleged reasons.”

Reddit threads and Instagram “tea” pages scavenged for clues. Newsrooms published with the urgency of a constitutional crisis — even though this was, at its core, a young woman’s family emergency.

We treat celebrity weddings as communal property. We want the dresses, the guest list, the location, the love story — everything. In return, the couple must smile on cue and perform perfection. But weddings are stressful in the best of circumstances. Add fame and the pressure becomes surveillance.

Smriti Mandhana is not just a bride-to-be. She is an elite athlete, a daughter with a sick father, and a woman whose milestone crumbled overnight. Yet her humanity was shoved aside for speculation: Did he cheat? Did she know? Will she walk? Why did she delete posts?

We never pause to ask why we crave answers. We simply refresh — hungry for the next twist.

The system is built this way. The entertainment-industrial machine doesn’t want pauses; it wants drama. It doesn’t reward empathy; it rewards conflict. Even without controversy, weddings are one of the most emotionally intense events people go through.

Every bride drowns in decisions — seating charts, outfits, relatives, expectations. Every groom faces pressure from finances, rituals, family politics. Meanwhile, life refuses to stop because there’s a mandap being decorated. Parents fall sick. Plans derail. People panic. But when you are Palaash and Smriti, those human vulnerabilities become “sensational turns.”

Then came the screenshots — blurry, unverified, stripped of context — and the circus peaked. Truth was optional. Platforms hit publish anyway. We’ve built an ecosystem where speed beats accuracy and speculation is packaged as “information.”

The most grotesque part? There was no criminal allegation. No governance issue. No matter of public safety. No financial fraud. It was a postponed wedding. And it was treated like a head of state had been toppled.

We keep confusing the private sphere with the public stage — then mock people when they collapse under the weight of our gaze.

Maybe the real scandal isn’t whether someone flirted or behaved badly. The scandal is how easily millions feel entitled to barge into two families at their most vulnerable.

The internet worships certainty. Real life is messy. Love is messy. Marriage is messy. Celebrities are allowed to experience that mess without becoming headline fodder. If we can’t extend that basic respect — especially in moments of illness and emotional shock — then it isn’t the couple who needs to rethink their choices.

It’s us.