Gold Never Lets You Down
As my Delhi-bound flight from London landed, I realized Delhi doesn’t ease you in gently – it grabs you by the hand and pulls you into the noise, colour and chaos. The first thing I noticed there wasn’t the heat or the noise. It was gold.
As we drove through the busy streets, I pressed my nose against the taxi window. Everywhere I looked, gold caught my eye – on the street hawker’s wrists, on the temple deity, on babies hardly old enough to walk. It didn’t feel like showing off. It felt... important.
Soon the taxi pulled up outside my Nani’s house. She was waiting at the gate, arms wide open. As we sat together with a glass of nimbu pani, she caught me staring at her gold bangles. The question rushed out before I could stop it. “Nani, why does everyone here wear so much gold?”
She stroked her bangles gently. “Beta,” she said, “gold isn’t just jewellery here. It is a family’s savings, a safety net, a nod to age-old traditions. It never loses its worth, crumbles or disappears. Even Lord Krishna wears it. Gold never lets you down.”
As the sky turned from gold to pink, Nani led me quietly into her bedroom.
She sat in her rocking chair and said softly, “My dad did not have much but worked very hard on the farm. When times got better, my mom bought some gold jewellery. One day, she divided it all into three pouches and asked her daughters to pick one. My heart leapt when I opened mine.”
She handed me an intricate velvet case. “I almost sold these once,” Nani said quietly. “When times were hard.”
I looked up at her, surprised.
“But I couldn’t,” she continued. “Because they carry my mother’s story. And now, they will carry yours too.”
The room went silent as if the whole of Delhi was waiting for this moment. I opened the lid with trembling hands. Inside, on a bed of faded red velvet, lay two small flower shaped gold earrings, simple, perfect and older than anything I had ever owned.
I kept those earrings close as years passed. One rainy Sunday morning back in London, my granddaughter Meera sat beside me. I looked at her curious eyes and remembered myself as a little girl stepping off a plane in Delhi, dazzled by gold. I called her into the bedroom quietly, just as my Nani had all those years ago. I told her the story of my golden flower earrings as I placed the same velvet box into her tiny hands. “Thank you, Nani,” Meera whispered.
I had never met my great-Nani, yet whenever I wore those earrings, I feel a warm glow, as if she were a part of me. Now Meera would feel it too.
I smiled. Nani had been right all along. Gold never lets you down.
Outside, London was grey and drizzling. In that room, something glittered.
Kiara Gupta, 8.
