Girl's Best Friends

That’s how the Marilyn Monroe cliché goes anyway. About diamonds. To me, they may not be the best friends, but they do make for some good friends. Some really, really good friends. That being said, let me confess. I am crazy about diamonds. I remember the exact day when these shimmering stones cast their spell over me. It was many, many years ago. In my small, dusty hometown. In the corner of a dark, narrow cobbled lane. In a little jeweler’s shop. Grimy. With mattresses strewn on the concrete floor in front of locked glass cases and hidden safes. The jeweler sitting cross legged behind his worn out, vintage desk. Propped up by rolled cushions. Pictures of gods and goddesses, bathed in cheap agarbatti smoke, on the lime washed wall, looking down on each and every transaction in what could only have been an implicit approval.

My mother and I held on to a frayed rope and climbed the steps to the jeweler gingerly, and were greeted by the large man. My mother, in hopes of getting a discount, told him her maiden name and pointed out their fathers or uncles or someone knew each other. The man, surprisingly, made the connection. Or he was a really good salesman. After sitting down on the streaked mattresses, my mother explained the job. It was a ring. For me. I was a seventeen year old tomboy, who refused to wear any jewelry but had agreed to wear a ring. Set in gold and garnets. My mother had wasted no time. And on a cool, sunny Saturday morning we sat in an auto rickshaw and went to the jeweler’s to pick the design and order the ring.

We chose the garnets, settled on a design and were about to leave, when the jeweler asked if we would like the ring set in diamonds instead. My mother shook her head. Not today, she mumbled. There really was no money for diamond rings. Just take a look at the diamonds. He persisted. I just got a shipment yesterday of some really nice ones. What’s the harm in looking? He smiled though his thick glasses. He reached in a safe under the desk and pulled out a small steel box. He opened it with yet another key and nestled inside, amidst rustling, pink paper were many exquisite diamonds. Shining coldly like a white campfire. Their brilliance took me by surprise. He was telling me to stretch out my hand. He adroitly picked a large stone with tiny pincers and placed it on my palm. A little more than two carats. He said through his tobacco stained teeth. I brought the palm close to my face and peered and was taken aback by what I saw. The stone had infinite depth. It was bottomless. You could see the shining light from within it. The more I looked, the more I was pulled by this beautiful glow that seemed to radiate from somewhere deep inside the diamond. It was hypnotic. This is what true love must feel like. I thought to myself. I stretched my palm once again, reluctantly this time and the stone went back in the little box and then to the little safe. We left the store but I could not get the diamond out of my mind. I had never seen anything like it before and gradually comprehended why so many people worshipped diamonds. I had become one of them.

And I was fortunate enough to be given diamonds. Later, by mom, when I turned twenty-five. Then BigGeek when we were engaged. Then my grand mom when I got married. Then BigGeek on an anniversary. And I have been gleeful – there is no other word – gleeful to get these stones and wear them.

And then came a movie. Blood Diamond. BigGeek and I watched it and it left a huge impact on me. The diamond trade is ugly. Who knew? I didn’t. Along the west coast of Africa, in countries that only seem to exist only in high school geography books and 120 second BBC news clips, countries like Sierra Leone and Liberia. The diamond trade thrives here. Diamonds are mined in forced labor camps, smuggled and sold, the money used to fund despotic governments who torture their own people, chop off arms of small children (so thy cannot vote when they grow up) and send able bodied men to forced labor camps and the cycle continues. Two hours later, I told BigGeek I had sworn off diamonds. The images of 6-7 year old kids with chopped arms haunted me. It could have been us. I thought. Had we had the misfortune of being born there. The next day, I looked it up, in the hope that this would be just another Hollywood creation. That things like this happen only in movies. Not in real life. But they do. Everyday.

I understand diamonds are just another commodity. Had that part of the world been rich in say, oil, they would have smuggled and traded oil or whatever other natural resources to fund their despots. But I can’t, despite rationalizations, come to buy diamonds any more. I cannot buy a diamond to wear it on my finger knowing, somewhere, someone gave up an arm for it. Literally. And then I saw the DeBeers documentary. I still love diamonds, but I refuse so buy them. There are labs that create synthetic diamonds. Not zirconia, but real diamonds. Chemically identical – carbon under pressure and heat. The diamonds are not cheap. They cost as much as mined ones, but are humane. The diamonds haven’t really come to the Zales store in your mall yet, but they should soon, if they can stand the pressure from the mined diamond lobby. Until then, I’ll bide my time and wait patiently.