Together with my mother and my mother-in-law-to-be, the next ten days flew by with daily trips to Ealing Road, Wembley (also known as ‘Little Gujarat’). Ealing Road serves the penny pinchers, high-end shoppers, and everyone in between. It’s chock full of Indian snack shops, restaurants, designer fashion houses, budget clothing shops, fabric shops, goldsmiths, jewellery stores, and stalls selling all manner of wares from India; everything from religious items to spice tins and steel plates to furniture, knick-knacks and bric-a-brac.
Musky incense mingled with heavily spiced frying batter, and the latest 90s Bollywood music blared from boomboxes on the roadside stalls. Bright scarves swayed in the wind next to tables piled high with music CDs, bangles and bindis of every colour imaginable. The pregnant me with my morning, noon and night sickness, was not to throw up or pass out in the midst of the odours, din and hullabaloo of the cars and people filling the street. For almost 10 days straight, with anti-seasickness bands strapped to pressure points on my wrists and a bottle of fresh ginger water in hand, we traipsed up and down the road searching for everything we needed for the wedding.
One day, in one of the shops, my vision went blurry, and I saw lights, like in cartoons when a character bumps their head and they see stars. I sat down feeling sweaty and almost fainted. My mothers were worried for the baby, but we dared not say anything about it in front of the shop owner. It would be too scandalous. Here, everyone knew everyone in the Gujarati community, and we were here to shop for my wedding after all. I had no choice but to recover and plough through. We had to get things done.
There were numerous jewellers side by side on Ealing Road, and the day my mother and I went to one of them to buy my wedding jewellery, she opened a bag and emptied the contents onto the counter. It was every piece of gold she owned, bar a single chain that her mother had given her. It wasn’t very much as my mother had eloped to get married, so she hadn’t had traditional gifts of jewellery or a trousseau. Some chains, a couple of rings and a few pairs of earrings were all she had, and each piece was sentimental to her, but she laid them on the counter to exchange them for a set for me to wear on my wedding day.
Shopping with Maanav’s mother was a totally different experience. She said I were to choose various items as per their tradition, something with pearls, something with different gems, something with diamonds, etc. In each shop we entered, it felt as if the entire shop was brought out before us. There was so much to choose from. I selected a couple of simple, gold sets that I could wear regularly with sarees at future functions, and I tried to avoid getting anything with diamonds. Maanav’s mother, however, insisted I had to have at least one piece. It was their tradition. To please her sentiments, I settled on the most minimal piece I could find.
I think back on this now, and I realise that I could have had anything in any of those jewellery stores. I was never given a budget, but the thought of getting as much as I could never crossed my mind. I’m not sure if other seventeen-year-olds in my position would have done the same, but I’m grateful that I didn’t see things that way.
Diamonds were, and still are, baffling to me. I couldn’t ever justify anyone spending ridiculous amounts of money on a rock, a piece of compressed carbon, no matter how sparkly it might be. Maanav asked if he should get me a proper diamond engagement ring, and I refused that, too. I didn’t think it was necessary. I never understood the hype of a diamond ring, so I never got one.
I feel that just like our thoughts have no intrinsic value, any physical item, too, is only worth the value we put on it. For me, that means a diamond is worth… well, zero. A couple of times, people gave me diamond earrings as gifts, and I either lost them or didn’t wear them. I liked my £2.99 Claire’s Accessories ones better. The value I put on those was greater than the value I put on the expensive diamonds. Eventually, people realised there was no point in buying me expensive jewellery.
I also wonder, if diamonds are so ‘rare’, then why does almost every engaged/married woman in the world (especially in the West) have at least one? Why do people spend months and months of their hard-earned wages to buy a rock that symbolises ownership? And why don’t men wear a bright neon sign on their hand that says ‘UNAVAILABLE’?
The movie Blood Diamond hadn’t been released when I got engaged in 1998, and at the time, I didn’t know anything about the dark reality of diamond mining. If you haven’t seen this film already, I highly recommend it. When I watched it after its release in 2006, I shed tears of sadness and shame at our ignorance. It made me even more pleased that I had never rocked a rock on my ring finger.
It is horrifying that people are taken advantage of, abused, tortured and lose their lives because someone wants to wear something sparkly and because corporate entities want to fill pockets: yours with lots of little rocks, theirs with lots of big money.
The marketing machine of this world makes you believe:
“Diamonds are rare!”
“Diamonds are special!”
“Diamonds are a girl’s best friend!”
“Diamonds are forever!”
“Diamonds, the ultimate symbol of love!”
But if you really think about it, if you didn’t place any value on them, then what are they really worth at all? My gold wedding-day set was a waste of my mother’s sacrifice, too. I wore it all only once. I could have easily done with a pretty costume set at a fraction of the cost. I don’t know why it was assumed that I had to wear a gold set. I now feel I should have refused it, just like I did the diamond engagement ring.
Of course, there are those of you who can easily afford gold and diamonds and genuinely derive joy from gifting them to others and wearing them. If you’re not ignorant about it and it makes you happy, that’s up to you.
But it saddens my heart to know young couples are struggling to afford one little diamond to get engaged, just because society and clever marketing say they should. In my humble opinion, money not spent on a wedding could well be invested in the marriage and the couple’s future, or put towards something kind for others, for making a difference in the world. Every gesture of generosity and kindness, no matter how small, counts. We never know how far the ripples of one kind act can radiate, and that feeling of satisfaction and happiness is true and lasting.
In my eyes, it’s kindness that is the ultimate symbol of love, not a shiny rock.
(Originally published on os.me on May 25, 2021)