Passage to India

By Sarah Raper Larenaudie/Jaipur

THE GUARD SITTING in a plastic garden chair in the Gem Palace garage may or may not be listening as I spell my name for the second time. "Marie-Helene. I'm here to see Mah-ree Eh-len," I insist, mindful that his reserve could be linked to the millions of dollars in jewels just upstairs. His wobbly head shake becomes more vigorous. "He only knows Gujarati. He says you can go up," a male voice calls out.

French jewelry designer Marie-Helene de Taillac has agreed to take me on an insider's gem-shopping adventure here in Jaipur, where many of the world's colored stones--emeralds from Colombia, rubies from Burma, aquamarines from Brazil--are cut and polished before they are shipped to such stores as Tiffany, Wal-Mart and neighborhood jewelers. Two flights up, there are shoes everywhere--loafers, sandals and dainty, beaded dance slippers. Double doors draped with wilted marigolds lead to De Taillac's atelier. Lit by stark winter sunlight, the room's entire floor is laid with mattresses covered by white sheets. De Taillac, 41, in a brilliant red tunic with a red wrap, emerges from a back room and introduces three assistants from France and Sweden, who pad around barefoot and then settle cross-legged behind low tables.

De Taillac pounces on the envelopes on her table. "When I get the packets, it's like sweets," she says. She unfolds rainbow moonstones, sparkling rose-quartz disks, aquamarines, mirrorlike smoky quartz ("the stone of depressed people") and a mound of sprinkles identified as multicolored sapphires. "Here's an order," she says. "And here's a problem: the buyer has indicated that for some items she would like two. These are stones; they occur in nature. I cannot get the same twice. But Justine will try." Justine Rumeau, De Taillac's right hand of six years, is already sorting through citrines to find the best pairs.

Ten years ago, De Taillac struck a deal with Munnu Kasliwal, one of three brothers and two cousins who own and run Gem Palace, a gem wholesaler and retailer with specialized cutting and polishing workshops around town. The Kasliwals have parlayed a privileged relationship with the royal families of Rajasthan going back generations into an international following of wealthy jewelry junkies who go for Munnu's unusual pieces (a gold bird perched on a ring, pecking a dangling diamond briolette) and swear by Gem Palace's quality and old-fashioned cuts. The emporium in Jaipur has an Old World feel and all sorts of maharajah castoffs. For those who ask nicely, Munnu's nieces will show off the regalia.

De Taillac--who lives in Jaipur for half the year with her son Edmond, 5--has her atelier in Gem Palace, enjoys access to its craftsmen and buys most of her stones through the company. Her pieces--among them a much copied, chunky cabochon ring and a necklace featuring a "river" of cut stones--have been scooped up by fashionable women ever since stores like Colette in Paris and Barneys New York introduced them in 1997.

Jaipur, capital of the colorful Rajasthan state, is the world's largest and most diversified center for cutting and polishing colored gemstones. Last year India imported $83 million worth of colored gemstones and exported $193 million in finished stones, according to the country's Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council. And 55% of the world's diamond supply in value terms (85% of volume) is processed in India and traded in Bombay, now known as Mumbai.

INDIA'S SUCCESS IN information technology derives from calculated public policy, but its predominance in jewelry is an anthropologist's affair: 5,000 years of sea and caravan trading with Arabia, Greece and Rome. "Plenty of rubies, plenty of emeralds! You should thank God for having brought you to so rich a country!" Vasco da Gama was told when he sailed into Calcutta in 1497. Most Indian mines were exhausted by the late 19th century, but the gems kept coming. And whether they were commoners buying "1-g bangles" or royals commissioning turban ornaments, Indians were always mad for jewelry.

"People believed in wealth that the eye could see," says Princess Esra Jah, the Turkish-born former wife of the grandson of the last Nizam of Hyderabad, over tea at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Bombay. Her work for the family's ambitious restoration of Hyderabad's Chowmahalla Palace as a museum is much admired, and nobles hope the family will be allowed to display permanently the Nizam's fabled jewel collection, which was acquired by the Indian government in 1995.

There is a widespread consensus in India that gems can improve one's health and destiny: family astrologers order pearls to cool tempers and emeralds to boost teenage boys' school grades. Princess Diya Kumari, 35, daughter of the maharajah of Jaipur, wears a large diamond pendant and earrings and a small evil-eye ring during her afternoon stroll at the palace. When Jaipur was built, beginning in 1727, her ancestors offered tax incentives to lure talented craftsmen, including jewelry workers, and their descendants continue to work all over the city.

Top-quality beads are just one Gem Palace specialty, and Kasliwal grabs several strands of garnets to demonstrate the differences. "This one is artisanal production, each bead carefully drilled, each one faceted by hand. The Tiffanys of the industry will buy this one, and the average worker could produce 20 or 30 beads a day," he says. A second strand looks duller and less uniform. "These have been tumbled in a machine and then finished. A worker can produce 800 of these a day." The artisanal strand wholesales for $70 to $80; the industrial one costs $2.

We duck into a room where four men execute pieces in the traditional enamel and kundan technique, in which narrow ribbons of pure gold are wedged around the stone. "The gold is so pure the workers cannot touch it," Kasliwal says. He nods at a packet of uncut rubies. "Burmese, exceptional quality. They already have so much life," he says, valuing them at $1.5 million, and then he takes a call from the royal family of Qatar.

The next afternoon De Taillac directs a driver to the Nawab Ka Choraya neighborhood, jammed with gem shops and throngs of small-time brokers showing their packets in the street. "Did you notice I took off my jewelry?" she says, smiling. "They copy." How to describe the chaos--with monkeys swinging in and out of dilapidated, baroque fac,ades, sugarcane presses spewing smoke, and dozens of men (there are very few women in sight) pursuing De Taillac. "Hallooo, halloo. You buy emeralds. You want Indian rubies?" they cry, tugging at her clothes, and when she stops to look over a handful of lemon quartz, she causes a traffic jam.

Everywhere one hears the piercing screech of the cutting wheels. It's crazy to watch precious stones being negotiated by people standing in spit and piles of garbage. And why is there no security? Everyone appears to have his pockets stuffed with stones, but there is only the occasional camera, some padlocks here and there and a few guards. "They are very casual about the gems. They've always lived with it," offers De Taillac.

HARI RAM SON, MOHAND CHAND & SONS, GOVIND GEMS, NP JAIN, RM BUMB read the signs on the shop stalls. Pitliya Jewellers has a table with a plastic washbasin filled with pearls. Jain families--members of an ascetic religious group that observes strict dietary rules--run the businesses; Muslims are the expert craftsmen. Later I notice a poster of Mecca in a workshop where four men facet lemon quartz in a weird green glow. Gauri Shankar Dangayach, production manager of one of Gem Palace's cutting units, leads De Taillac down several side streets with open gutters and into one of a dozen look-alike buildings. We go up the labyrinthine stairs and suddenly arrive in a tidy workshop with a magnificent view of Jaipur. "What are you cutting?" De Taillac asks here and at other workshops, but today she's not buying. "If I bought my stones in the market, they would be cheaper," she explains, "but I would have to take an entire lot, including ones I can't use. At Gem Palace, I pay more to have a selection."

At J.N. Jewellers, an argument across the counter appears to be verging on a fistfight. Two men punch calculators furiously. A third appears to wrestle with the seller. Dangayach laughs and interprets: "He's saying 15 rupees a carat, the other one says 2, and the broker says, 'Yes, you take it for the pleasure.'" Finally, the deal is done at 5.25 rupees per carat. "I've seen a broker literally pick up Munnu and carry him across the room to close the transaction," says De Taillac.

The Mumbai Diamond Exchange, the somewhat glorified name for three office towers that have seen better days, is much more orderly than anything in Jaipur. On the ninth floor of the Panchratna tower, dealer Sunil Sethi of SK Exports flicks princess-cut and round-cut diamonds with tweezers without looking up. Every day he sees samples from about 35 brokers, who carry the stones in flat plastic boxes tucked into special cotton undervests.

Upstairs at Tache on the 21st floor, Dhirendra Hirawat slides a flat box out from under his desk. "In India the highest expense a man has in his life is getting a daughter married, and jewelry is the biggest part," he says. He unwraps a necklace with 70 carats of rose-cut diamonds in a kundan setting with a peacock enamel motif. "This is for my cousin. We just had it made." And asked for the wedding date, he laughs and answers, "We still have to find the boy."