Diamond buys

(Well, it is not that I do not want to blog, but just that I am in dire danger of being run over by deadlines if I spend that long outside what I am writing that hour. It will, like all things, pass. Or so I hope. Meanwhile, this is the latest from the journalistic files....)

It’s soon going to be wedding season, Christmas, the new year, whatever, and perfect timing to look for that solitaire you want to give someone (maybe yourself?). The story goes that the first diamond engagement ring was given to Mary of Burgundy by her exalted suitor, Archduke Maximillian of Austria, in the late 15th century; this was a rough diamond elaborately set in gold. But the Indians knew all about diamonds long before that. Vedic texts call the stones heera, the gemstones of the planet Venus, representative of love and the good things in life. The ancient Romans believed that diamonds were pieces of stars that had fallen from heaven and have magical, mystical powers. And indeed the sparkly stones have a special power that those who have beheld it, held it, can well understand. Diamonds may have been called ‘a girl’s best friend’, but they cast their spell over anyone who appreciates beauty.

When I went out to look for a sparkler that I could take home with me, I found that things were rather more complicated. Buying a diamond in itself is easy enough today, with so many brands available both in stores and over the Internet. But buying a good diamond for the right price can be a bit of a problem – and the bigger the stone, the bigger the problem. Say you are looking for a one-carat solitaire. Since you will be spending a lot of money – and believe me, your budget could be rather shaken up, as mine was – you have to go about this with some intelligence. Of course, as anyone anywhere will advise you when you do your research, you must first of all consider the four Cs – colour, clarity, caratage and cut. And then, before you actually hand over the money and collect your jewel, there is that nebulous concept of intuition: Does the gem feel right? No one can point you in the right direction on that one. But it is important. Lots of stones called loud, clear and clarion to me. Unfortunately, they all got stuck in my checkbook before they reached my finger.

Diamonds are generally classified primarily by their colour. The most valuable, and most rare, are completely colourless, even to the trained and expert eye. As per the guidelines of the Gemmological Institute of America, which sets the standards, D is the clearest, while Z has a distinct colour. From E to I, no colour can be discerned by the layperson; J, K and L could be sold as ‘good’, but have a tint when looked right in the eye…er…‘face’, as it is known. Of course, there are the fancy stones that are brilliant yellow, bright green, vivid pink or even, in very rare instances, chameleon, which change colour (from yellow to green, for example) when exposed to light.

And the price can zig-zag madly up and down the scale. According to latest figures from Rapaport (which defines the numbers in the business), a one carat D clarity flawless stone will cost about Rs 6.75 lakhs. Mercifully, before I could do more than lech, I was told hastily that these D pieces were so rare that I could not get one without a fairly long waiting period. The same size of stone that is graded G, which seems colourless and perfect when set, will be priced at about Rs3.5 lakhs – more bling for your buck, in a manner of speaking. Of course, the better the air-conditioning in the store you buy from and the fancier the designer label on the staff uniforms, the higher the price of the gem, but that is a minor detail. While a family jeweler is perhaps the best person to buy from, especially since you can deal with the seller if something is off-kilter, it is always best to get a certificate of authenticity and quality when you are buying a stone of this size and expense.

I retreated, bloody but unbowed. I would get my diamond one day. Find it, buy it, use it and enjoy the feeling. I know that nothing else even comes close to the bliss of wearing a diamond that is perhaps not as big as the Ritz, but close enough for jazz as far as you are concerned!

The Diamond Registry in the USA has some valuable tips for diamond buying: Never buy a stone that you think is ‘cheap’ or that is on sale – there will be a reason for the discount that usually has to do with size or quality. Make sure that the certificate that you are issued is from a genuine ratings institution and can be verified by an independent assessor. Never buy a diamond just because you like it – unless of course you have the money to throw away and you buy diamonds like most people buy potatoes. And, since you will of course be politically conscientious and humanitarian, avoid ‘blood’ diamonds and those from regions that have major human rights violation problems. Why have that on your conscience? Most of all, never buy a diamond as a short-term investment. The stones do not depreciate in value and cannot be sold easily like shares or a house.


A diamond may be the ‘hardest thing on earth’ (it is not really!), but it still needs looking after, especially if you want it to be forever. The stones can chip, crack or even split if hit in the right direction, even if it is protected in a good setting. Don’t wear the solitaire when you are doing anything that could cause it to be scratched, if you are working with anything oily, so that dirt does not collect in the setting and blur the beauty of the stone. Avoid exposure of the diamond to chemicals, from chlorine and hairspray to acids and strong alkalis. Jewellers recommend that you could boil your solitaire in its setting in a weak solution of soap water to clean it, but taking it to the experts is a better option.

The small luxury of life

(I like luxury as much as the next person, but my definition of it is not fancy cars and houses and silks. I prefer the luxury of being able to enjoy being who I am. And am glad to see so many people I like and respect feeling the same way. This was published yesterday...)

On the 2008 Forbes List of Billionaires, 53 people featured are Indians. The prediction is that there will be more individuals in this country with that kind of spending power within the next ten years. To cater to the myriad tastes of this population, actual or potential, a host of luxury brands of everything from kitchen sinks to handmade shoes have been making their presence felt in the great Indian bazaar. And all this is being lapped up by more than the super-rich; the huge segment that is the salaried middle-class is wallowing (almost literally) in the freedom and luxury of being able to shop for what has been, for a very long time, just an advertisement in a glossy magazine, be it a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes, a Louis Vuitton handbag, a Zegna suit or a Versace frock. They have the money to buy, they want to buy and that hunger to buy is reportedly growing fast, at a rate of about 30 per cent every year. Retail consultancy group Technopak finds that approximately 1.8 million households in India now have an annual income of $100,000 or more and are willing to or actually do spend about $10,000 every year on purely luxury purchases.

Spending money on non-essentials is not new to the Indian ethos – from the Cartier baubles that the erstwhile maharajas acquired to the bushels-full of firecrackers burst by the average family to celebrate Diwali, we as a people like extravagance, spectacle, creating an impression. ‘Old money’ no longer frowns on ostentatious displays of wealth, perhaps because it is no longer unusual to show off with a latest-model Mercedes or a meal at a seven-star restaurant. The days of Gandhian simplicity are fading fast and self-denial or abstinence seems to be a thing of the past. The message in the bottle of bubbly has changed: If you can’t get no satisfaction, just go buy yourself some! Luxury is very easily available today and a lot more people can afford to find it, guilt-free and with the greatest pleasure.

But what is luxury today? If it all about owning a brand that everyone envies? If it about finding products that make life a little happier and far more comfortable? Or is it something intangible, on which a price tag cannot be attached? Sangita Kathiwada of Melange put it, "Luxury is a grandmother hand-crafting a phulkari shawl for her granddaughter from the day she is born." For her, personally, “The greatest luxury is wearing a 400-count khadi (Rs1,200 per metre) kurta pajama and lying on pure cotton sheets that are changed every day. It is about an experience that is unique, personal, joyous to all six senses. To me, luxury is about feeling, about so much comfort – Manolo Blahnik shoes are vanity, not luxury, not comfortable!”

According to Siddharth Grover of Sans Tache Art Gallery in Worli, “A real luxury to me is like having a new toy, something that I don't get too often. It also has a lot to do with what I can't afford easily and applies to both the tangible and the intangible. I would not treat something I can get off the shelf as a luxury; anything I get in ration is a luxury.” As someone who buys and sells art, which cannot really be classed as ‘essential’, he sees the “availability of luxuries growing and only getting better. I know from experience that definitely increases temptation and makes me want to indulge more…and I do. After all, I get what's available here from here and what's not, from where it is.” And is there ever a guilt factor involved in self-indulgence? Grover feels that “The guilt factor does set in at times, but the contentment I derive from indulging eventually takes over. I see no reason to do something and feel guilty later - it beats the whole purpose of the exercise!”

And there are many who understand luxury to be that special something that makes life richer, more interesting. Like young musician Taamara, whose definition of real luxury “would be a quiet and uniquely built house near a small lake, surrounded by hills. It's a perfect setting for a musician to create and enhance talent. I would like to be away from the filth and clutter of the cities, but with all the modern technology and facilities that a city provides in an isolated land that I choose.”

For Dr Vidya Vencatesan, Head of the Department of French at Elphinstone College, “Luxury is getting away from Mumbai to a quiet place where life is comfortable but not excessively so, to sing, read write, sleep, eat healthy and simply catch up with family. It is about things that you would say and do at leisure, not like items on the agenda at a board meeting.” Her kind of indulgence “has nothing to do with India opening up or closing down, it is about my life and lifestyle choices.”

And there is luxury that comes with a price so high that it cannot be put on a tag. Like for Shobhaa De, writer, designer, creative adventurer. “For me, the ultimate luxury in today's frenzied times is TIME itself! There is never enough of it..... I wish my day was like chewing gum and I could stretch it for 72 hours. Luxury is not an object - it is a way of life. To live with grace and beauty is luxury.” She is not, she says, “someone driven by the desire to possess something desperately. I rarely lust after unattainable goods; I used to lust after Hermes scarves, those large squares, till Raisa Husain gifted me one recently!”

A random survey would show that true luxury is not what comes easy, but what needs work, striving, effort. It tends to be almost unattainable, rare, and so more greatly prized. If you can buy it, it is practically a necessity and, as De says, “Necessities are hard to define; they are so relative. I love the good things in life, but only up to a point. I am happy to admire them on other people!”

End of days

Even as Barack Obama and his victory took over television last evening, I surfed for anything slightly different. And found the usual complement of soap operas, a couple of crime dramas and one very irritating society-party-report show with a very irritating anchor who puts on a strange and very irritating accent as she wanders from society party to society party wearing fashion just off the ramp and clutching a microphone that must smell from all that has been breathed into it.

That apart, I wandered into a show that I have watched maybe twice in my days as TV-watcher and avoided ever since because it not only made no sense, but was also a little to stodgy and sanctimonious for my taste. Which was obviously not everyone else's taste, since the soap has been going eight long years and the stodge and sanctimony garnering high viewership, too. Or so I believed. But apparently not. According to the host channel, it has lost its oomph and its get up and go has got up and gone, so it has been asked to stop. But the makers of the show are protesting and demanding - and hoping to get - a last minute reprieve. I am puzzled by this, since the show has to end today if it does, though the court hearing is tomorrow. So if the makers do not geta reprieve, they need to continue, and if they do not, they have to stop. So how do they manage to gear this episode? If it is ending, they need to come to some logical conclusion, so that all the 'I's are crossed and the 'T's are dotted, in a manner of speaking. If it is not ending, that process is not necessary. So what happens today? Except that whatever happens will make little sense to me, it would certainly be worth finding out how it all goes to bed tonight.

Soap operas defy all logic. In one that I watch occasionally, more to understand what a friend and long-time fan is talking about when she tells me excitedly about it, some lady is pretending to be someone else when she is actually the wife of the male lead and has had plastic surgery so that she looks like someone else. Somewhere along the way, life has got very confused and no one is quite sure who is doing what to whom and why. The how seems to be clear. In another, which I stopped at to see the truly strange fashions that the women wear, one lady's husband seems to be deathly ill and they are headed to an ashram to seek some sort of solution. Why not a new doctor for a second opinion, or even more experts, since there does not seem to be any shortage of money or will to live, I cannot help wondering. And in yet another, a badly dressed and worse bejewelled woman has just stuck a knife into her husband, while the villain looks on aghast, perhaps amazed at how his own villainy has been outdone.

But today's episode has me completely befogged. More since I cannot decide whether to watch it or not. But not knowing is worse than knowing too much or even too little, isn't it? Or is it?

Winning is all!

So Barack Obama won the US presidential election. It was sort-of-expected. Ever since his speech at the Denver Convention Center, I have been on his side, like so many other people all over the world. And it is not only about him being 'different', not pure white, multicultural, so many qualities that make him such a contrast to George W Bush. It is because he is young, dynamic, ambitious and with a genuine (or seemingly so) desire to make thing happen, to change, as his campaign kept stressing. At some level, I wonder, how does it matter to us, to me, as the average urban Indian who is more interested in getting on with my life and making ends meet happily enough to have some indulgences in the middle. But, since I pride myself on being globally aware and involved, I guess it does indeed matter.

What would be my wish list for the new President of the United States? Start with international relations, on a very broad scale. Get out of other people's wars. Stop fighting in Iraq. Make sure that in finding Osama bin Laden and stopping the way on terror all over the world, more young people do not have to die. Get all those traumatised soldiers out of the Middle East, out of Congo, out of Afghanistan, out of death's way. And, even though your own interests may be at stake, let various countries whose pie you have your fingers in, fight their own battles. Maybe that is a naive point of view, but it makes sense if you consider the number of young people who are dying in wars they do not understand and have no real involvement in, except that they have signed up to defend their country and its interests, no matter where they have to go and how, if ever, they come back.

Yes, there is also the money thing. The global economy is in a bit of a mess, mainly because of the way that American and the Americans have been trying to handle their lives. Take loans, be unable to repay them and go on with that vicious cycle until the world economy as a whole is dangerously close to folding up on itself. Make people all over the world who have no idea what is happening except that they cannot afford the lives they have led all this while and that they will need to do something, anything, everything, to save themselves and their loved ones from having to beg on the streets for pennies that can barely be spent by those they are begging from.

There is much that Obama will have to deal with urgently, never mind the new decor of his new home or the menu that could include dal and okra. If he manages to at least come up with some kind of plan to handle his current plateful of problems, it will be far more than those who went before him (and still do, as Bush reaches the end of his tenure) have been able to do. Never mind solving problems, Obama will need to fully understand them first. And I, like so many others like me here in India, wish him all the very best, with a little extra Indian magic added for more luck, in doing just that. Welcome to the real and very stressful world of heading the world's most powerful democracy, Barack Obama. I certainly do not envy your new job!

The great cheese bazaar

When I was very young and abysmally ignorant, I would eat a strange concoction made with cheese powder mixed with milk or water, spread thickly on a piece of packaged white bread, dotted with butter and grilled speckled brown. It may sound disgusting to my rather better educated sensibilities today, but it was, in essence, a perfect cheese toast, more or less deconstructed from its sophisticated cousin, if you are willing to be polite. Soon after, I learned what cheese is actually about, and developed a passion for it that shows in my refrigerator, my shopping lists and my jeans size. Stints in Europe and the United States made names like Brie, Camembert, Ricotta, Stilton, Colby and Maytag Blue familiar additions to my vocabulary. And the hunt for the Indian equivalents began when we came back home. With a cheese-making tradition that went back so many hundreds of years, we must have progressed, was the logic. Unfortunately, for the most part, we have stayed mired in a holding pond of the curdy white stuff called paneer. Do an Internet search for ‘Indian cheese’ or ‘cheese made in India’ and the first zillion entries are paneer, with its myriad spellings.

But there has always been a slice of hope in this seemingly bleak scenario where mera Bharat is far from mahaan. About the best cooking cheese that was locally made and available was the red-rind 250-gram segments sold by Aarey dairy at their stalls around the city. Sadly, these packets soon faded out of existence, and from just walking down the road to get them to driving across from Malabar Hill where we lived then to the stall on Nariman Point, to finally never seeing the stuff again, it was a journey into a vast and cheeseless wasteland. A few years down that road, with memories of ‘Kalimpong cheese’ dancing in our deprived heads, I demanded that a friend posted with the army in Bhutan source and acquire the stuff for us. She did, with many complaints that it was smelly – which it was – too strong – ditto – and extremely sharp – halleluyah! Along the way, we also discovered a wonderfully hard and sharp Himalayan yak cheese, perfect for a sauce to smother your cauliflower with or to bake as a kind of raclette; but a reunion with the milk-food some years later from Dorabjee’s in Pune made it clear that the mind can glorify aspects of childhood.

So when I found I could explore the world of Indian-made cheeses to write this, I was pleased. In the intervening years between local produce and a rather better fed budget that could stretch to imports that did not deprive me of shoes or diamonds, I had almost forgotten to look at my own country. One day, at a small but well-stocked store in a tony part of Delhi, that awareness was awakened again. I stood at the counter at the Steak House in Jor Bagh and tasted my way through a panoply of cheese, a lot of it produced within our own borders. Kuldip Shenker, who runs the store, introduced me to Cheddar and a wonderful Gouda from Sikkim, as well as a small but significant range of products from Himachal and Delhi. I became a regular customer there for cheese, buying and bringing back to Mumbai kilos of the stuff, but all happily made in India. That is when I decided that if I could find it, I would buy local rather than foreign.

The problem is to find it in Mumbai. A quick sampler of well known cheese counters in the city showed me that imported is still an haute favourite. At the Indigo Delicatessen, for instance, a wonderfully sharp Double Gloucester rubs wax with a delicate Emmental from Germany, but Indian-made cheese “does not sell”, I was told. They did once have a cheese roll, but not too many takers. I got the same story at Hypercity, Vashi, which does have a decent cheese counter, where the salesperson told me that the cumin-spotted Gouda was from Sikkim and they also had a cheese roll from that state, though it was not in stock at that moment. At Food Bazaar in Phoenix Mills, I sometimes see small packets of cheeses from Kodai, rather pricey and perhaps not attracting too many buyers. Amul had a halfway decent Emmental, but it is close on impossible to find it these days and the website order I placed four years ago has not yet arrived – maybe I should send a reminder? ABC Farms in Pune makes a fabulous selection that is stashed in the boot of my car within minutes of my arrival there, from a tangy sharp Cheddar to a mellow smoked Scamorza to a fragrant Gouda to small tubs of delicious fresh feta. A phone call to Dairy Craft’s office in Mumbai proved hopeless, though it did show me just what most of India uses cheese for “You want it for pizza, no, madam?” was the response when I asked what cheese is available.

But the great cheese bazaar is not a distant dream any more. Various dairy companies, from the unresponsive Amul to the interestingly responsive Dairy Craft to the Delhi-based Flanders Dairy Products to Modern Dairies to the familiar ABC Farms, La Ferme Cheese in Auroville (which delivers by courier for special orders only) and so many others have started making delicious cheeses, from the red-ball Edam to the sweeter Emmental to the multi-purpose Mozarella and so many more. I am waiting for the day when I can wander down to the corner store and indulge my passion for cheese, with joy in my heart and Jana Gana Mana floating in my mind.