Elephant polo and unpaid bills

The taste of India's merchant princes for extraordinarily lavish weddings has not been lessened by their rickety business finances, says top wedding planner Saurabh Agarwal. But they're no longer so willing to stump up the cash.

"We need to put more work now into getting the money than we do staging the event," Agarwal says. "People still have lavish weddings, though they will maybe budget for $8 million rather than $10 million. But getting them to pay the bill afterwards is getting much more difficult."

Cool weather and more auspicious astrology mean weddings cluster from October to December, then again in February and early March.

The start of the month saw Nandini, daughter of Ajay and Swati Piramal, who own pharma giant Nicholas Piramal, tie the knot at the City Palace in Jaipur.

Then on Thursday and Friday, Bollywood actress Amrita Arora married businessman Shakeel Ladak in Mumbai.

Other big recent weddings are the Taleja nuptials in Mumbai, and the PP Jewellers do in Kathandu (for some reason, wedding planners often label weddings by the bride's father's company).

A friend who attended the Piramal do says there were few signs of a slowdown, with guests put up in five-star splendour, three themed days set in different palaces and forts across Jaipur, world-class polo players flown in, elephant polo, extravagant food and scores of Bollywood singers.

"It was the biggest wedding I've ever seen in my life," he says. "If you think about all these open-air forts and palaces, it must have cost between $5 million and $10 million to put it on."

But weddings are booked six months in advance: it may turn out that India's elephant owners, flower arrangers and caterers - if they finally get paid - have a tougher time come next September.

You would think the auctioneers of fraud-hit IT giant Satyam would do their best to make the sale of a 51% stake less murky than the accounts of jailed founder B Ramalinga Raju.

But bids were invited yesterday with little information on how the winner would be decided, or on how bidders could do proper due diligence.

The accounts haven't been restated since Raju claimed he had inflated assets by $1 billion. Bidders must hope all will be revealed once they submit their interest on Thursday.