Maitrayee Sen is a Chartered Accountant and has been with Calcutta Electric supply Corporation (CESC) for the last quarter of a century. Apart from the obvious regard for her work, Maitrayee is muc...

Maitrayee Sen is a Chartered Accountant and has been with Calcutta Electric supply Corporation (CESC) for the last quarter of a century. Apart from the obvious regard for her work, Maitrayee is much into music, reading and travelling, the last on hold for the past seven months for reasons that need not be elaborated. Among her favourite authors are Satyajit Ray and Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, and the film she loves most is Aranyer Din Ratri. Having been schooled at Gokhale Memorial, Maitrayee went on to an Economics degree from St. Xavier's and then secured her CA credentials.

Doesn't sound like the kind who'd order for herself a Love Knot necklace? ---- you'd be surprised. Maitrayee is all smiles and fun and, despite the conservativeness of her education, is ebullient to a fault. It suits her, and suits her taste, and is probably the reason she chose a love knot in gold to adorn herself with.

This hand struck guinea gold necklace comprises two punch-katai chain sections intertwining to form an open knot below which the chains continue and are snipped off at varying lengths, capped and given two polished ball 'weights' to hold them in place. There isn't a single solder in any part of the chains, mind you, the manually punched bits are folded four times into each other to make the 'rope' that loops into the knot, the free space in the middle of which is occupied by a large chhela topa. But that's the plain gold necklace. What about the enamelled one with the red and green flower medallion in the centre and the dotted sphere drops at the ends? Well, that just happens to be the other side of the same ornament. It's reversible : mina on one side, plain gold on the other. And the central motif is consciously different as is the articulation of the ball drops.

The Love Knot motif itself is ages old. We can't claim any part of that design. It's even in one version of the MBS catalogue from nearly a century ago. The dual-side innovation, of course, is ours. It frees the necklace of its dutiful love stance and conceals and reveals, as needed, an amative side that could be decidedly transgressive.

This brings us back to the beautiful and brilliant Maitrayee and her view of things and the aspect of love that drew her to such an ornament. Here she is, in her own words.

"I am in love with Kolkata, my city of joy, and have never wanted to leave this place. A.Sirkar is a place where I feel at home. My first relation with you all dates back to almost twenty years with the purchase of a gold pendant. I have never needed to visit any other jeweller ever since. In fact, A.Sirkar is not just a jeweller, they are artists weaving stories in the form of jewellery. I look forward to a lifelong relationship with this very 'bonedi & shabeki' organisation."

We can only count our lucky stars that someone like Maitrayee has been spontaneously attached to us and our work for this long a time. It's our singular honour to be able to provide her in jewels whatever she needs. And as we do so, we thank her over and over again for extending her custom to us through all this time, and hope that, as she's said, this will be 'a lifelong relationship.