The Bangle – A Dying Tradition

Two gold bangles indented with designs of circles, flowers, leaves, and lines in a continuous circle, rest on the dresser. The patterned design starts – or ends – with a line, followed by a circle, another line, a leaf, a flower, a leaf, a line, a circle, and is continued. The bangles are soft to the touch; you can feel the texture of the gold - the indents of the design, the cuts into the smooth metal. The bracelets are ¼ of an inch wide and are 2 ½ inches in diameter. I pick them up and slide them into my hand. They don’t fit perfectly, but at least they go in.
These bracelets were given to me by my mother when I was ten. My sister has an identical pair resting on her dresser; she was twenty-one when she received hers. The point is that our mother gave us these pieces of jewelry before we were married. An Indian girl is supposed to get jewelry from her parents or parents-in-law. More often than not, especially in India, girls supposedly get these when they get married and it is usually a form of dowry, or love. An Indian woman after she is married is supposed to be adorned – a si...