The crowd of screaming fans and the stream of celebrities seemed to resemble the scenes before a first-day-first-show of a much-anticipated Kannada movie.
Described as the ‘prestigious wedding of Sandalwood’, Kannada icon Rajkumar’s granddaughter and actor Shivarajkumar’s daughter, Nirupama, married her classmate Dileep on Monday.
This is the first function of the younger generation of the Rajkumar family. The wedding was, in a sense, a public affair, with a website (shivannamagalamaduve.com) being set up to help fans catch a glimpse. The who’s who of South Indian cinema turned up for the gala marriage ceremony. This included Telugu film personalities Nagarjuna, Srikanth, Rajamouli and Tamil actor Shivaji Prabhu.
While it was a star-studded celebration inside the exuberant marriage halls, it was chaos for motorists outside.
Nearly 30,000 people are expected to have come for the event. With the crowd swelling up on Ballari Road — which is just four lanes at this stretch — the fans and onlookers had to be allowed inside the grounds where the police had set up barricades. At points, policemen had to disperse crowds that were attempting to push their way in.
Throughout the day, traffic piled up besides the busy Mekhri Circle. The traffic police had issued numerous advisories, including asking motorists to use alternative roads as well as to leave early if catching a flight from the international airport.
