Posted below is a great article about the experience of jewellery shopping in New Delhi by writer/columnist Shobha Narayan.
If going shop to shop and trying to bargain down stubborn store assistants isn't your cup of tea do give us a call. We have hundreds of designs you can view right on your PC at your own convenience. You can also get that elusive one-off piece through our custom design services.
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Stars of India: Jewelry: Forbes Life magazine
In New Delhi, shopping for one-of-a-kind jewelry is as much an art as the pieces themselves.
When I was born, the story goes, my father bought a gold coin. Eager that this family tradition be continued, my mother repeated the story to my husband just as I was about to deliver my daughter in a New York hospital. My husband bought some cake instead, which we shared with all the nurses. And therein lies a difference between the Indian culture I was born into and the American one I adopted: Indians buy gems and gold to celebrate an occasion; Americans buy food or foliage.
Indians are obsessed with jewels, largely because of the dowry system, which is slowly disappearing, although the culture that surrounds it is not. Even now, when a daughter is born, congratulations to the parents are usually followed with a jovial, "Ah, now you'd better start collecting jewelry." Because a woman's worth was literally measured by the amount of gold and diamonds she brought with her to marriage, jewelry became an insidious part of her self-esteem. At parties and weddings, women still scrutinize one another competitively and hit the jewelry stores the next day to acquire new baubles in an effort to keep up with the Patels. Nowhere is the subcontinent's love affair with all that glitters more apparent than in New Delhi, its capital and richest city, which boasts thousands of jewelry shops--most of them honest--offering some of the best shopping of its kind anywhere in the world.
