It’s amazing how time is this very concrete thing, yet it can be so abstract. We watch the seconds, minutes and hours tick by but quantifying time with a numerical value really just reminds us of how little of it we have.
I consider myself to be a reflective person and all I can think about these days is how much time I’m spending away from the things that really mean something to me. Whenever I have down time, I find that everything points right back to jewelry. Whether it’s a cool blog I’ve found or a new artist I’ve stumbled upon, jewelry is where it’s at for me. I just love adornment and the history we have as humans in wanting to decorate ourselves. Sometimes I wonder if my fascination with jewelry is an innate quality passed down to me through ancestry.
I come from a long line of goldsmiths in Gujarat, India. I wore jewelry before I could speak, crawl or interact with others (as many young Indians do). As a child, I admired my mother’s jewelry collection and examined it with intently with myopic eyes and tried to figure out how it was made. I dreamed of the day I could wear the ornate pieces my mother collected, and literally had no idea of my ancestry until college.
I went to college thinking I would major in photography since I had already experienced success in the medium, through competitions and working with a professional photographer. As I began my studies, I found myself bored and simultaneously interested in other media. I started taking glassblowing courses, and finally ended up in the metals studio. It was uncanny, but I remember having this instinctual feeling like I was home. While there was a learning curve with my skill set, I picked things up pretty quickly and realized that I needed to change my major. It was only after having spent a few semesters in the studio that I learned of my history.
My mother and I chatted one day during a school break. I was home, enjoying the ease of life under my mother’s care, eating well and not having a care in the world. She and I were discussing how school was going and my progress in the jewelry program. It was during this chat that my mom casually mentioned that I came from the jewelers’ caste in Gujarat. The way she nonchalantly brought it up and moved on from it intrigued me even more. I stopped her and asked her to clarify because I thought I hadn’t heard her correctly. She repeated the statement: you are a Soni Gujarati, which means you come from the goldsmith caste. Who would have thought that my feeling of being home in the studio was linked to my ancestry? Who knew that there was a historical basis for this connection I have with jewelry?
I still can’t believe it sometimes. The knowledge I have of my history is a great reminder of why I need to maintain a connection to that feeling I had when I walked into the metals studio. Home. It’s where my heart lies and it’s also where I need to get back to. By writing about home, I’m hoping that I finally get back there and start doing more things I love.
Amita Lathigra 