A desi wedding at the 2023 Burning Man Festival

A rigged-up white elephant-shaped art van, named Funkdelephant, that blared Bollywood music during the baraat of an Indian wedding, a first at the recent Burning Man festival in Nevada, US.

If you had attended this year’s Burning Man Festival at Nevada, the US, you would have most likely come across an elephant! A rigged-up white elephant-shaped art van, named Funkdelephant, that blared music during the baraat of an Indian wedding, a ‘first’ for the festival. The couple Sheel Mohnot, 41, and Amruta Godbole, 37, got married, with an open invitation for all the people gathered for the festival. The baraat had a few hundred attendees, and the elephant played Bollywood music. It caught the attention of the desis who were attending the festival, surprising them to no ends.

The Indian couple Sheel Mohnot and Amruta Godbole.

Since 2010, Mohnot, a venture capitalist, had been attending the Burning Man festival known for its flaming pyres (the installation of the ‘man’ gets ritually burned at the end of the festival) and psychedelic art. Each year, a pop-up city springs up in the middle of the desert with at least 70,000 people attending it. Godbole, a lawyer, had just attended once last year. The duo, who were ‘set up’ last year by a mutual friend, decided to get married there because it was a ‘fun’ thing to do. “Many of our friends go to the festival and we liked the idea of celebrating with them there,” Mohnot said.

Luckily for the couple, it was bright (and very dusty) on the day they got married and the next day, on a Friday, the rains began. “We couldn’t go out when we wanted and ended up staying on for another day than what was planned,” he said. The wedding, Mohnot said, was a ritualistic one, officiated by his younger brother, and had the baraat, Saptapadi, exchange of garlands and the marriage vows. The two even had Playa names — the names attendees use at the festival — and so, Garbanzo (Mohnot) and Roots (Godbole) were married on the Playa ground in a ceremony that began with an invocation to Lord Ganesha, the ‘remover of obstacles’. Neither the rains nor the muddy slush or the ‘moop’ (how rubbish is referred to at the Burning Man) were obstacles in the path of the newly-weds who are now clean and dry at San Francisco.

At the 2023 Burning Man Festival, Nevada, the US.

Mohnot insists it was not a ‘publicity’ thing and although the two had had a metaverse wedding thanks to a Taco Bell competition, said the marriage was “just a fun thing” and a great time was had! As the officiant said — May the energy of this atmosphere amplify the sacred bond you share — the couple took seven steps around a small fire with the steps signifying Radical Inclusion, Gifting, Decommodification, Radical self-reliance, Communal effort, Civic responsibility, and Leaving no Trace (scars on each other’s hearts).

As the fellow ‘Burners’ watched, the couple went on to dance, celebrate and spread the love. It was a wedding to be witnessed, as an onlooker told this writer. “I wish to get married just like this!” she said.