It hasn’t been a week yet since we gave you the Recap post on “Chokers Strung or Set With Pearls” and again we’re presenting one of the same though the ‘sameness’ here is of a different kind. There...

It hasn’t been a week yet since we gave you the Recap post on “Chokers Strung or Set With Pearls” and again we’re presenting one of the same though the ‘sameness’ here is of a different kind. There’s an exigency in this country, you see. Syncretism and secularity, both ingrained in the character of our land, seem to be at stake. But we’re jewellers in the truest sense and can hardly look beyond beauty and history and heritage — all of which we breathe into our jewels while birthing them. There is no scope for protest here, besides that which the agency of our art might allow. But can we be imagineers of such calibre that a jewel, petite and pulchritudinous, might also be a hortatory voice silently conveying through its enduring loveliness the miracle of a unified society where diverse communities commingle in peace and with certitude in a culture that transcends religion? Let the world see. 

Five lines of seed pearls hold in place two crescents, each with an incomplete lotus within it. The choice of beads — to set into the centre of the flowers and also to cohabit with the large and small pearl fringe — is soft green emeralds. The workmanship is cutwork and flattened wire, polished and chhela, and the border of the crescents is of mihi-ball with an additional framing of strung seed pearls — contrasts and contradictions everywhere, but all cohering with ease to form a jewel beauteous and beamish both.            

A solitary oil lamp glowing among the green and white gems becomes monumental in its anonymity — it could be Alladin’s magic light or perhaps one that’s burning bright in a niche carved into a Tulsitala in some remote village of Bengal. Its provenance is of no importance ; what is is the fact that it’s a divine light, and one that reflects the ever-luminous sacredness of the falcate moon and the infinite wisdom of the lotus. 

The terminal pieces are each a scroll to which is attached a crescent with an emerald bindi within it.   

Infer what you will. A profligacy of words in explanation is completely unnecessary. Those who know, know. 

This strong but graceful, dainty but daring, simple but iconic choker crafted by concerned hands in pure guinea gold has been imparted an earthy polish traces of which can be seen on the moon and the petals of the lotus. It’s deliberate. In our stillness we are returned to earth — all of us. All of Us. It’s only fair then that while we live upon it we should do so in perfect harmony and with peace in the presence of each other.   

Hopefully, not far into the future, this little jewel — HilaalKamal — shall become a bellwether for the revival of our collective humanism in what is rapidly becoming a rather sadly Cimmerian age, and also a precious remembrancer of the golden era of our unbreakable communal togetherness. Time will tell.