Growing your Ears to Dangle a Snake

When a young girl came of age, the story goes, the jeweller would visit her home to pierce her ears. He would then insert soft hay into it to make sure that the hole didn't close. A few days later he would visit to "tear" the hole just a bit more.  Insert more [...]

The Wondrous Kempu Jewellery

Literally-- red The Tamil aesthetic is tuned to muted colours and high-quality material. People love kempu because of high-quality rubies without additional embellishments. "No jigina," or sparkly stuff, as traditionalists would say. Kempu jewellery fits this profile to a T. Typically [...]

By |2019-09-30T22:30:36+05:30July 9th, 2019|Categories: Making, Tamilnadu|Tags: , , , , , , |15 Comments

Shobhaa De

Jewellery memories as a child?  What my beautiful mother possessed-- which was not very much! I now own and wear her simple mangalsutra, and the four gold bangles I was given when I turned 18. My father was a bureaucrat and retired as Additional Law Secretary, Government of India. [...]

Padmini Kumari

Jewellery!!! It’s never enough . I have never heard anyone saying in my family we have enough. They literally find excuses to buy more. Because it’s easily transferred from one generation to other and it is the most transformative thing we can wear. [...]

Gayatri Rangachari Shah

My father was a diplomat so I didn’t grow up in India.  Because we were overseas a lot, the culture of dressing up and being so adorned wasn't as grand as it is at home.  The way we bedeck ourselves with jewellery is at a different level from the rest of the world.  [...]

Madhu Natraj

What are your memories of jewellery growing up? My childhood memories are like a bouquet of sensory perceptions and jewellery features quite prominently in them.  I recall the sound of my mother’s gold and glass bangles clinking delicately, the gentle rustle of her silk ‘pallu’, as she opened the iron almirah that [...]

Jewellery in Astrology

In Hindu astrology, the word graha means "to seize."  The nine planets or nava-grahas seize people at different parts of their life and influence them either positively or negatively. Gemology is about using gems to alleviate the effects of these planets. Some people say that a gem needs to be of at least two [...]

By |2019-09-30T22:51:53+05:30June 16th, 2019|Categories: Meaning, Tamilnadu|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |15 Comments

Urmila Sathyanarayanan

Jewellery was always part of giving a reward in our family.  We would procure and wear a piece of jewellery, whether new or handed-down on important occasions.  If I did well at school, or for birthdays or arangetrams, jewellery played an important role. I can remember that I got a pair of jhumkis [...]

Ahalya S.

 As a child, I was always interested in getting dressed up.  The women in my family were very simple. My grandmother had earrings, gold bangles, mangalsutra.  My mother, a few pieces more than that. The first time we indulged in jewellery shopping properly was when my brother got married.      [...]

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