Gold makes the world go round

An Indian Jeweller made sure his daughter truly was the golden girl on her wedding day by covering her in 22 carat gold jewelry  including a huge collection of gold chains, weighing 2001 grams worth more than £ 330, 000 and a Ferrari.

The Bridegroom has hit the real jackpot with the golden girl.

In Tirupati, temple of Lord Vishnu, a man and his daughter had worn gold jewellry worth £400,000. The father of the bride made his millions from selling confectionery in India’s southern Andhra Pradesh state. He moved back in April 2014. It was apparently  widely condemned on social media websites once the images from a mobile phone was shared with people branding it both crass and shocking. This display of wealth in a country where millions of families struggle to find enough money to feed themselves every day caused this reaction.

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Indians are one of the world’s largest consumers of gold, with wealthy families often spending millions of pounds on jewellry to wear at weddings and other special occasions. Weddings are one’s special day to cherish life long, so ladies have different choices including wearing a lot of gold. The severe problem is associated with the Dowry system in which the Groom’s family ask for a lot of Gold to make them happy which is illegal and morally wrong.  Over time, families who accumulated wealth, however, started investing more and more  and a major share of their income in purchasing gold ornaments and showing off for prestige and is reflected directly on weddings. Most families are thinking “ What will people say if our daughter doesn’t wear enough ornaments on the wedding day? Our neighbour asked about if we bought jewellry already.”

Centuries back, Kerala used to be a Matriarchal society and in some places still, women have  the final authority in the house. The newly wedded bride had the next authority after the eldest lady in the family. The wealth in the family was also managed by the women. So when the brides go to their in-laws home they bring their own share of family’s wealth with them. The new bride was considered to be Laxmi ( the goddess of Prosperity and wealth), that evolved the tradition of Dowry ( shreedhanam). But recently, the culture has changed, and women are no longer the head of the family and it became a male dominated society. Women were slowly pushed towards household chores. Dowry became a way of exploiting the wealth. Families started demanding the dowry. Kerala’s obsession for gold is cleverly exploited by ruthless gold selling companies as their gold business are booming round the year.

A girl with nice character, beautiful heart and full of love and compassion ready for face challenges of life would always be worth more than 100 kilos of gold.

In August 2014, Pankah Parakh, a politician  was shot. He was the owner of a textile business near Mumbai, and he treated himself to a shirt made of solid  18-22 carat gold, weighing four kilos and costing £127, 000, which took 20 people and 3,200 hours to create, for his 45^th Birthday.