Excerpt #8: "The Search" But then again, why do I really want to locate the choker? Am I merely taken by its story? Obviously, this is not the only regal jewel to have travelled the world, changing owners innumerable times. Who doesn’t know of the Hope Diamond—perhaps the rarest ever, of unique size, shape and quality—plucked from the eye socket of a Hindu idol and cursed with bad luck, as the legend goes? Owned by Louis XIV (who called it his French Blue), it then went through a rollercoaster of events, including being stolen during the French Revolution, after which it was re-cut. Its uses spanned an unimaginable spectrum, from being worn to raise money for charity, to being sold to feed a gambling addiction. I try to imagine where the necklace could be. Is it kissing the wrinkly skin of some uptown nonagenarian—perhaps a lonely former countess or maharani—who managed to purchase everything but true bliss? Is it tucked away in a high-end pawn shop, waiting to be collected by someone who needed a lot of money in a hurry? Is it buried in the ground, far away from greedy eyes? Perhaps the man on the Toronto–Amsterdam flight had a point—that the choker is probably locked away in a velvet box in an air-conditioned, stainless-steel-lined vault of a private bank in Manhattan or Geneva or Abu Dhabi, and that the owner of the vault has a name like Rosenberg or Rowntree or Rafiq. I can’t imagine what the necklace is valued at now, or if I will ever be able to lay my eyes on it, touch it, even with gloved fingers. Again, what does it mean to me? Why have I spent five years of my life and most of my personal savings hunting for a treasure I can never hope to acquire? Why have I already scoured the records of all the big auction houses in the world, seeking virtual and telephonic appointments with strangers, some of whom think I’m dangerous, while others think I’m deranged? It is not simply the mesmerizing beauty of its craftsmanship—the sheer artistry of the jewellers who were commissioned to set the gems—that is propelling my search. It is also not the sentiment that the necklace graced the trousseau of Devika, and was passed down by Lydia, both of whom are part of my lineage. No. I just need to find it. (from #BlueBlood, Penguin Books India, 2011)
Posted on: Sat, 14 Sep 2013 14:07:29 +0000
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