One of the things which we have been struggling to remind ourselves, and it cannot be enough times that we understand it, that our lives, in themselves, as they are, and we, as we are, are beautiful, complete. That is what we try to communicate to anyone who comes in contact with us or our brand- that you are beautiful, complete, and much more, as you are. Our jewellery, or any jewellery cannot make you beautiful or confident or happy. Unless you see yourself as beautiful and buy from a place of joy and freedom, nothing much is going to happen. You will only fall in a loop of endless searches and swiping and be bored and move on to the next new thing. Cycle repeat. Buy it because you want to, knowing that there is an element of choice. Buy because you are aware of the abundance in your life. Because the only thing a beautiful piece of jewellery can do is to awaken you to your forgotten beauty or show to you a side of you that you had not known. The other thing it can do it is to reveal to you your taste, the things that matter to you and the innate capacity in you to appreciate beauty. Our brand, the work we do, is a way of realising this and sharing and communicating the same with our friends, audiences, buyers.
It often sounds like a contradiction- why are we selling jewellery, if we feel our lives are anyway complete and why would anyone buy the jewellery we are selling if they don’t need it? It may sound outrageous, unrealistic and crazy, especially for a brand that intents to sell itself- but the truth is this- we dont need to sell jewellery, and you do not need to buy it. As such, it is nowhere close to being an essential product. It is what it is- an accessory. Something that adds to what already exists. Something that may emphasize, underline or highlight the beauty that already is in you. It is, clearly, a mark of privilege. We have the luxury to indulge in beauty, in what can be very simply called excessiveness.
Most of us have been geared to think of excess as something negative. We have learnt to see our lives as limited, determined by needs and limitations. Raising these questions becomes difficult when one working on designing marketing strategies for a brand. There are pressures of breaking even, generating profits, doing what is “essential” to make things roll. Unless, of course, one reminds oneself, that what we are doing in the first place, is in fact, inessential. And the pressures, well those too are rather unhelpful and more imagined than real. As we unfolded this to ourselves, slowly and patiently (and in moments running out of patience even), allowing ourselves to bring our doubts to the table, we realised that this work is as unnecessary for us, as it might be for our buyers. Necessity and survival are different matters altogether, from a monetary point of view. We could do several other things and our buyers would find several other sellers. Then why this? And though there might have been a series of events that drove us to certain decisions, why do we still stick to them? All this led us to questioning how we define our needs, our wants, the very nature of our own likes, dislikes and mechanisms of existence.
As people with a reasonable education, decent jobs in the past which we quit to do something of our own, something that we would enjoy, and with the clarity with which we could see how the markets and language of selling plays upon the insecurities and ideas of incompleteness of people, all the above questions hung heavily upon us.. Our love for silver or for jewellery was not enough of an answer . Especially with the diverse interests, skillsets and passions each of us has. It occurred to us that we had to invert the logic of our enquiry to wrap our heads around the puddle of ideas that we were caught in. We had to move away from very particular things regarding the nature of silver and jewellery and brand language and ask ourselves the simple questions- Why do we do anything? What is life? What is work?
We dwelled over the weather, the life we have, and having hit the massive dead end of unnecessity (bordering on pointlessness) of things, we had to refresh our minds and wiring all over again. It took us days, perhaps months. What we then came to realise was no less than wondrous. It was so evident and clear that it needed such grueling questioning to be wrenched free from the conditioning of our minds. It was simple – life as we experience it, with all its ups and downs, highs and lows, madness and sanity, our capacity to create, to feel, to make these webs which we then find ourselves entangled in, the questions and the answers, the points and pointlessnesses, all of it, every single bit of it, is an instance of excess. Everything over and above the magical act of breathing, of that process of inhalation and exhalation, each of it, is excessive to life- life as a whole cosmic phenomenon- of which the entire universe, the planetary system, the beings, sentient and not, our very perception and consciousness of it- as something outside of the cycle of mere transformation of matter or energy- is it not all an instance of excess? That passage between the moment of birth, which can well be seen as the moment of death, from the smallness of our limited body and understanding amidst the mass of humanity and surfaces of land and oceans to the infinite limitlessness of our imagination and possibilities, between the illusions and realities, everything is excessive. One can observe as a stoic, renounce or reject as ascetic or celibate, rejoice as a poet, an artist, or be a very ordinary being flowing through impenetrable ebbs and rise of everyday existence.
And that is precisely where we glue ourselves back into our act. It is the idea of rasa, of being an aesthete, of doing things with the awareness of their excessive nature, as something which is more about the passing of time (life), making a journey, from a place of peace, joy and freedom in whatever we do. It is about being able to acknowledge and underline the excessive and enormous nature of our lives. It is a feeling of wonder, where one can think of sringara, of adornment, of appreciation, of giving. We have been able to understand our fascination and decision to work with silver jewellery much better after all this thinking. Perhaps this is a the case with a lot of decisions- one works ones way backward- finding logic to support a choice/decisions made intuitively or for which we have forgotten the reasons, absorbed in the act of doing, till a new road block or conflict between thought and feeling emerges[ read more].
We always knew this but it was never articulated for us- We are not writing, working, creating because we want to sell. It’s the other way round. We want to write, create and share what we think is beautiful and hence we sell it, so that we can continue with it, given the functional necessities of the system we have found ourselves, at this particular juncture of time and space.
Likewise, we do not want you to buy what we sell because you need it, or have a certain lack which will be filled by a mere piece of metal. We would like you to buy it because you know that you are beautiful and beyond need, and you might want to indulge in and appreciate it further, as yet another mark of acknowledging the excessiveness that you life is.