A doctor is a caring person, the nature of the profession deems that to be unequivocal in the practice of it. But when you have a doctor who's a RabindraSangeet singer (trained by none other than Pandit Ajoy Chakraborty), who has her own much appreciated YouTube channel, is a popular lifestyle blogger, dabbles in interior decoration with great success, and is working on the frontlines fighting the pandemic, nurturing innumerable patients back to health at the Shambhu Nath Pandit Hospital in Calcutta, you don't have just a caring person, you have an extraordinary medical practitioner and a rara avis amongst human beings. And when she happens to be a young girl in her early twenties, you know that the future is in secure hands, and that no pestilence will ever defeat the human spirit when the spirit shines as strong and bright as Kinkinee's.
Kinkinee's getting married. This is the wedding Sita-har we've been honoured to design and hand-craft for her in rich yellow guinea-gold. Knowing her love for travelling, and that she's all set to go abroad to further her studies in general medicine, and how brave she is, and how completely selfless, and that she has within her a happy-go-lucky soul, we drew up a full moon cradled within a falcate moon, the latter left a simple polished surface fringed with ridged split-ball clusters that echo the musicality of her name. The graduated decorative tassels that hang from it have medallions in different shapes –– square, round, oval, semi-circle –– each containing an auspicious motif such as a palmette, butterfly, chandrapuli, and the night jasmine.These too have their own split-ball fringes, with the chandrapuli sporting a large polished ball amidst the jhumjhumis that alludes to the Frog Prince fairy tale ; but you don't have to know that, it's a sort of designer's secret.
The purna chandra is a layered shield with a pierced naksha shiuli ensconced within a lotus right in the centre. Ringed by two rows of katai hearts (one with a chhela wire heart on each heart and the other with triangular granulation on them), one each of Jaipuri thokai four-leaf clover and mihi-dana, and a final surround of pockmarked topas, the full moon is at once intricate, splendiferous and monumental, seizing the eye into examining the details and dazzling it into submission as well. Also, it stands in stunning contrast to the glowing crescent moon that so lovingly cradles it.
The side-chains too are calibrated to perfection, the kamal-ball-karai central biccha guarded by two plain sikal chains, all three stretched between facing chandrapulis with an oval medallion in the middle that has a perfo-naksha lotus with a butterfly in its heart and repeated motifs from the purna chandra as the layers surrounding this quintessential biye'r symbol. The voids between the chains are of paramount importance here.They not only allow the Sita-har to breathe (instead of becoming 'jabarjong' with overdone infill) but also allocate visual space to the justifiably arresting centrepiece and sidepieces.
It all comes together spectacularly, doesn't it, and makes the phases of the moon intrinsic to human life itself, specially for Kinkinee for whom the ebb and tide of life, the waxing and waning of the corporeal self, is a daily battle to fight and win, and whose sworn purpose is to save as many human lives as possible by renewing the weary, revitalizing the feeble, curing the infirm, and nurturing back to health all those who've given up on themselves.
And then there's the music of the split-ball jhumurs that adds a happy tone to the jewel whenever it's worn and replicates with a pleasing tinkle the name of the lady it belongs to : Kinkinee. May her walk of life lead to glory for her, and all the happiness there is in this world for those of such remarkable calibre and heroic spirit.