Log Kya Kahenge: The Money We Spend for Others

It is a Sunday afternoon in Wakad, and Rohan is folding laundry on his bed when the phone lights up with “Mummy.” She does not say hello. In his family, a call that starts without a hello means there is news with a date attached. “Parth ka card aa gaya. Surat mein hai, teen din ka function. Tum aa rahe ho na?”

Parth is the son of Rohan's masi, the older cousin who carried him on his shoulders at every family wedding when Rohan was small. Of course Rohan is going. He says so in the first ten seconds. It is the next ten minutes that cost him.

Because after the yes come the questions, and his mother has been collecting them for days. How much shagun should they give? Masi's family has always been generous with theirs, and people remember these things. Which outfit for which function? There is a haldi, a sangeet, the wedding itself and a reception the next evening. Will he wear that same sherwani again? “Photo mein sab dekhenge, beta.” And will he stay in the same hotel as the cousins, or somewhere cheaper, which, she adds in a lower voice, might look bad?

Rohan says “Haan, dekhte hain” and hangs up. The sherwani from Sameer's wedding, which Chapter 3 put on a card EMI, is still on his EMI wall with a few instalments left. He would be wearing something he has not finished paying for, to a wedding where he is expected to look as if money is no problem.

On Monday morning, while he is still thinking about it, a message arrives from a lending app he installed once, months ago. “Wedding season is here! You are pre-approved for instant cash. Money in your account in ten minutes.” Rohan never asked for it. The app seems to know anyway, the way a tailor always knows exactly when you have put on weight. He does not tap. But for one quiet second he thinks, “Bas is ek baar.” Just this once.

That is this whole chapter in three questions: how much to give, what to wear, and whether to borrow. Underneath them sits a fourth, which Rohan has never said aloud: for whom, exactly, am I spending this? This book will not tell you to give less, or to skip anyone's wedding. As Chapter 1 said, for most of us family money is love with a UPI reference number. The only idea here is that some of the rupees in an envelope are for the person receiving it, and some are for the people watching, and it helps to know which is which before the card is swiped.

That night Rohan sits down with a notebook and, instead of a budget, writes a list of everything the wedding will ask of him. The shagun. Two new outfits. Train tickets, a hotel, a gift for the bride's family, new shoes because his are scuffed. Then he does something his mother would find strange. Next to each line he writes one of three words.

The first word is “love.” This is money that exists because of a person. The envelope for Parth, who carried him on his shoulders. A gift for the bride, whom Rohan has met only twice, chosen because it will make Parth happy. Nobody had to ask for it, and nobody is watching. If the wedding were in a village with no phone signal, Rohan would still spend it and feel good the whole time.

The second word is “belonging.” This is the money that says, I am one of you, and I showed up properly. The journey, an outfit that suits the occasion, an envelope that embarrasses nobody. In India this is not shallow. A family that turns up for everything holds together, and some of the cost is simply the entry fee. Rohan writes “belonging” next to the train tickets and one reasonable outfit, and feels no guilt about either.

The third word is “audience.” This is money spent neither for Parth nor even for belonging, but for imagined faces. The aunt who will look at the shoes. The neighbour who will ask what was given. The cousin who posts photographs by midnight. The hotel one step above comfortable. The sherwani that must not repeat. An envelope sized to survive a comparison. When Rohan finishes, most lines say “love” or “belonging.” Only a few say “audience.” But the few are the expensive ones.

One question helped him sort the list. If this wedding had no photographer and no family WhatsApp group, would I still spend this? If the answer is yes, the money is for you or for someone you love. If the answer changes, you have found the audience.

Now look at the audience itself. Rohan tries to write down who exactly the “log” are. His mother. Two uncles who comment on everything. One cousin who quietly counts envelopes. After that, the list runs out. Everyone else is a crowd of faces his own mind has drawn, and it has drawn them with sharp eyes and a long memory. Real guests are mostly busy with the bride, the food and their own phones. Researchers call this the spotlight effect: we think other people notice us far more than they do. It does not mean no one notices. It means the spotlight is usually dimmer than it feels from inside.

There is a reason “log kya kahenge” is so hard to argue with. It is a bill that nobody sends. There is no invoice, no due date, and no one to negotiate with. It gets paid in advance, by you, just to be safe. Chapter 2 described the raise that disappears into a bigger lifestyle. This is the same leak, except the lifestyle is borrowed from other people's eyes.

“Log kya kahenge” is a bill that nobody sends, and everybody pays.

In Lucknow, the same Sunday finds Anil at the dining table with his phone on speaker. His elder brother Sunil's daughter Pooja is getting engaged next month, and the whole family has gone into planning mode. His sister Neelam, the same sister who rang Shalini about the engagement gift back in Chapter 4, is the family's switchboard. “Bhaiya, gift toh dhang ka hona chahiye. Log dekhenge.”

Anil agrees at once. Of course it should be proper. Then Shalini asks the only sensible question, “Proper matlab kitna?”, and the room goes quiet. Neither of them knows. Neelam does not know either. She says what everyone says: “Sab kuch na kuch bada hi de rahe hain.” “Sab,” it turns out, means two people she spoke to this morning.

This is how the price of a proper gift gets made, and it is worth watching. Nobody has a number. So each person phones around to find out what the others will give. Every answer is a little higher than the last, because nobody wants to be the one who gave the least. By the end of the week the family has agreed on a figure that no single person ever chose. A rumour set it, and the rumour only goes up.

Shalini does something small. She opens the Sunday notebook to the page from Chapter 4, the one with the arrear's four lines. The second line is the family share, and the engagement gift is already named on it. She does not ask what proper means. She asks three other questions and writes the answers in pencil. What would Pooja actually like or need? What can this line hold without borrowing from the other three? And what amount would let us sleep peacefully even after we hear what the others gave?

Anil starts to protest. “Sunil bhaiya kya sochenge?” Shalini answers calmly. Sunil bhaiya knows they live on a government salary, knows Kabir's fees go out every term, and loves them either way. If he does not, a bigger gift was never going to fix that. Anil laughs at the “if he does not” and lets the pencilled number stand.

The next part surprises them. Anil calls Neelam and says the number, plainly, before asking what anyone else is giving. There is a pause. Then Neelam says, “Achha hai. Mujhe bhi samajh nahi aa raha tha kitna bolun.” She had been waiting for somebody to say a number first. Said calmly, the first number did not start an argument. It started a sigh of relief.

None of this is rare. When SEBI surveyed more than fifty thousand households across India in its Investor Survey 2025, it asked families about their financial goals. Children's education came first, at 20 percent. Supporting family members came next, at 16 percent, and buying a house followed at 11. A child's marriage was named by 8 percent. The report itself describes financial life in Indian households as rooted in family-centred aspirations, with decisions guided as much by shared responsibilities and the long-term welfare of the family as by personal goals.¹

So money for family is not a leak in the usual sense. It is one of the main things Indian households say they earn and save for. The only open question is whether it is planned like a goal or ambushed like a surprise bill.

Back in Pune, the loan offer is still sitting on Rohan's phone, and it is easy to see why it works. The wedding has a date, and a date feels like pressure. The amount he needs is a neat figure he can almost touch. And the lender has done what Chapter 3 described: shown him the monthly instalment in big letters and the end date in small ones. Add the three feelings of the season, love, belonging and audience, and the tap starts to look almost polite.

What saves Rohan is something small. He counts. In the drawer where his mother makes him keep every wedding card, he finds last year's: Sameer in Nashik. Now Parth in Surat. A colleague has said his date is coming soon. A school friend has dropped hints. Whatever “just this once” means, it is a lot of onces.

That is the quiet flaw in the phrase. A one-time problem can sometimes be borrowed for. A problem that comes back every season cannot, because a loan taken every season is just a slow subscription to stress. Weddings, like Diwali, arrive on a calendar we all know in advance. A yearly cost needs a yearly plan.

If a loan is still on the table, for a wedding in your own home, say, or a real family need, there is one page worth asking for. The RBI's rules say that for new retail loans from banks and other regulated lenders, sanctioned since October 2024, the lender must give you a Key Facts Statement in simple language. It must show the APR, which includes all the charges and not just the interest, and a fee that is missing from that page cannot be charged later unless you explicitly agree to it. Credit-card dues are left outside this rule, so do not assume a card EMI comes with the same page.²

A loan taken through an app has one more protection. Under the RBI's Digital Lending Directions of May 2025, the borrower must be given a cooling-off period: an explicit option to exit the loan by returning the principal and the proportionate APR, with no penalty. The lender's board decides how long it lasts, though it cannot be less than one day. In plain words, a digital loan can be undone for a short while after you take it. Use that window if the morning feels different from the night before.³

Rohan deleted the app instead of tapping it. What decided it was a feeling, not a calculation. The loan would have turned Parth's wedding, which is a joy, into a twelve-month memory of a debt. The gift he had in mind was already a good one. It did not need an EMI standing behind it.

Look at what Rohan was really afraid of when he nearly tapped. The loan frightened him less than the phone call to his mother in which he would have to say, “Mummy, itna nahi ho payega.” Saying no, or saying less, feels like a verdict on love. The guilt arrives fast and loud. The consequences, as most of us eventually learn, are much smaller than the guilt predicted.

He makes the call anyway, the next evening, before going near a shop. He keeps it short and gives a number, not an apology. He tells her the amount he wants to give Parth. “Sherwani wahi rahegi, bas naya safa le lunga. Aur main ek din pehle pahunchunga, do din nahi.” There is a long pause, and then his mother says something he does not expect. “Papa bhi yahi keh rahe the. Bas mujhe bolne ki himmat nahi thi.”

The two of them had been protecting each other from the same imaginary audience. His mother was afraid of what Masi's side would say, so she assumed Rohan would want to impress them. Rohan was afraid of how his mother would feel, so he assumed she wanted a big envelope. Each was spending in order to please the other, to impress people who, in the end, had not asked for anything.

That is the strongest argument for talking early. Most “log kya kahenge” pressure is passed from person to person like a parcel nobody wants. The family conversation does not need a meeting or a spreadsheet. It needs one honest sentence from whoever dares to go first, said before the shopping starts.

A few sentences help. Say the number, not the apology: “Hum itna de payenge” sounds like a decision, while “Sorry, itna hi ho paya” sounds like a failure. Say that the gift was chosen with care: “Humne socha ye unhe pasand aayega.” And give what is free to give. Arrive early, carry the heavy bags, sit with the grandmother while the group photographs are being arranged. In many families people remember who was there long after they have forgotten what the envelope held.

Many families also keep a quiet record of who gave what at whose wedding, the lena-dena diary. It sounds old-fashioned, but it does one useful thing: it replaces guessing with memory. When a cousin's wedding comes round, you can see what that household gave you years ago and decide in a few minutes what is fair to return, without phoning five relatives. A PaisaTools calculator restates an old shagun in today's money and keeps a private register on your own device.

One habit from Chapter 3 still works here. Say the full amount out loud, then sleep on it. A gift decided at ten at night, under the pressure of a phone call, tends to be bigger than the one decided the next morning. Mute the family group for one evening if you have to. The envelope will not mind waiting.

The honest truth about “just this once” is that wedding season is the most predictable emergency in Indian life. We know it is coming. It has a month, often a date, and sometimes a printed card months ahead. That means it can be prepared for in a way few other surprises can. Here are four habits, small enough to survive the season they are meant for.

Habit one: write the season on one page. A few weeks before the first card arrives, take a single page and write every wedding, engagement and big function you already know about for the next five or six months. Next to each, put the person's name, how close they are, and whether you have to travel. It takes ten minutes. Rohan's page had five lines the day he wrote it and eight a month later. A page like this ends the feeling that every wedding is a fresh shock.

Habit two: decide the number before the shop. Beside each line on the page, write the amount you will give and the amount you will spend on clothes, before you open a shopping app or walk into a showroom. Shops are very good at moving you one step up from where you came in. The better sherwani is always just a little more, and the nicer hotel hardly any extra. A number on paper is the one thing a showroom cannot argue with. The shop's job becomes finding the best thing under your number, not helping you discover a new one.

For clothes, one new piece per season is plenty. A new stole or safa can sit on last year's sherwani, and the family photograph will be scrolled past in a few seconds. Borrowing from a cousin of the same size, or renting for a one-off function, is ordinary in many families, and nobody keeps a ledger of how many functions you wore the same outfit to. The sherwani on Rohan's EMI wall will be paid off in time. There is no need to start a second one beside it.

Habit three: a fund that is topped up all year. Chapter 1 and Chapter 3 both said, in different words, pay the future first. A wedding is a very near future. Open a separate pot, a different account or an envelope if you prefer cash, and put a small, fixed amount into it on salary day every month, not just in season. Rohan named his “Surat,” which made it feel like a trip rather than a tax. When the season comes, the fund pays. When the fund is empty, the list ends politely. Where such a pot should live is a question for another day, and this book names no product. What matters is that the money is waiting before the card arrives.

Habit four: one family conversation a season. Shalini and Anil's notebook has a page headed “Shaadi season.” Once, before the season starts, they spend twenty minutes on it: what they will give, what they will skip, who travels to which function, and who is covering for the elders. It also has one rule for the unexpected card: no answer on the same day.

Rohan went to Surat. He gave the amount he had told his mother about. He wore the old sherwani with a new stole, which one great-aunt called “nice” and one cousin asked about. At the sangeet he danced for what felt like forty minutes. On the train back to Pune he counted the cost in his head and found, to his surprise, that it matched the figure on his page. For the first time, a wedding had ended without a new line on his EMI wall.

In Lucknow, the engagement went off with a gift chosen for Pooja and a number that nobody had to guess. Neelam, Anil heard later, quietly used the same approach for her own side. Pooja still has no idea how many phone calls it did not take.

Three small steps. The first needs only a pen, the second a screen, the third a phone call.

Step 1 needs only a pen. Write the season on one page: every wedding or big function you know about for the next few months, who it is for, and what you would like to give. Then write love, belonging or audience next to each line. You do not have to change anything yet. Just look at the words.

Step 3 is a phone call. This week, before any card arrives, say one honest sentence to the person at home who worries most about what people will say. Rohan's was, “Mummy, hum is baar itna denge, aap bataiye theek hai?” Most of us do not know how relieved the other person will be.

What to take with you. Part of every wedding is love, part is belonging, and part is the audience. Pay for the first two gladly. Question the third. Decide the number before the shop, and say it to your family before the season starts. A yearly cost deserves a yearly fund, not a loan called “just this once.”

Next, in Chapter 7, “Before the Dream: The Cushion”: the wedding is over and the haldi stains have come out of the kurta, when a Tuesday arrives that no card ever warned about. A hospital bill, or news that a team is being cut. What happens to you if your salary stops for three months? And why does the cushion come before every dream, including the nice ones?

This chapter is for education only. It is not investment, credit, tax or legal advice, and it does not recommend any loan, app, lender, card, product, fund or stock, or tell you how much to give at any wedding. Family customs, loan terms, fees and rules change, and every person's situation is different, so before you borrow, read the lender's own documents and the latest RBI rules, or speak to a qualified adviser. The facts above come from the SEBI and Reserve Bank of India documents linked beside them. Rohan, Shalini, Anil, their families, the weddings and the lending app are made up, though the phone calls may sound very familiar.