Festival themed Riti jewellery

Going through my Instagram feed, I realised that there were several pieces of Riti jewellery that I had failed to showcase on the blog. I had originally planned to write about them as a sort of roundup at the end of the year. But as with many things in life, plans change and they got left by the wayside. Anyway, here three necklaces that were inspired by the three most important Hindu festivals of 2018.

Festival themed Riti jewellery

The Hindu yearly calendar is replete with festivals. From Pongal (Sankranthi) in January to Karthigai in November, there are celebrations throughout the year. However, I find myself celebrating them lesser and lesser with each passing year. I gave up celebrating my birthday many years ago. The eagerness I had as a kid for new clothes, rich food, or other festivities seems to have disappeared. But it does not worry me, for I look forward to simply a day off, a day of sleeping in, watching TV and getting my work life into some sort of an order. When I happen to have time, money or energy left, I travel.

Take 2018 for instance. During Pongal, I visited Siem Reap and it was a trip of a lifetime. During Navaratri, I was super sick and in the middle of a major home repair. Diwali was meh, with me cooped up with work. But somewhere in early November I started to retrospect about this feeling of not wanting to celebrate festivals and I was bummed. That is when it struck me that I could get over my blues by creating Festival themed Riti jewellery.

Virundhu necklace

The festival of Pongal or Sankranthi is harvest festival to give thanks to the Sun for a bountiful harvest. Pongal in 2019 will be celebrated next week on the 15th of January. The highlight of this festival apart from the colourful Kolams, plentiful sugarcane and sweet pongal (rice based porridge), and ethnic cottons is the feast of a lunch –Virundhu that is consumed on that day.

Being a vegetarian who doesn’t eat very spicy food, I like my meals crunchy, healthy and full of colour. Rice with Yellow sambhar, curd, and sauteed vegetables like carrots and beans are lunch staples at home. The addition of another vegetable dish, chips and a sweet (dessert) would make it a feast for me. That is what I have tried to depict in this jewellery set. I have designed this necklace in the Birth of a New Dawn colour palette that I created five years ago for my every colour has a story series. This necklace is sold.

Pataka Necklace

Pataka is a colloquial word for crackers. So as the name suggests, this is a crackers inspired piece from Riti. It is Inspired by the sights and sounds of 1000 wala (1000 tiny crackers strung together as in the picture above) this is a short necklace in red and black. While the red obviously is the colour of the crackers, the smoke is represented using the black – gray combo. Not to be missed are the cloudy inclusion bits in the pendant which are reminiscent of the bit papers on the road after the crackers have exploded.

I  made this necklace for people like me who have stopped bursting crackers many Diwalis ago but still remember fondly their childhood memories of bursting crackers with their family. The friend who bought it really appreciated the details which made me really glad. This necklace is sold.

Colours of Navaratri

I have written about the festival of Navaratri many a times in this blog. Also, known as Dusshera, it is celebrated for 9 nights and 10 days with extravagant displays of dolls, music and dance performances and other religious ceremonies. In the late few years, I find Navaratri Golu dolls to be painted in bright garish colours. While they do not look as elegant as those from past, they are still bright and cheerful. Just as I enjoy admiring my bead stash from time to time, I enjoy gazing protectively over my golu dolls every year. This year I could not take the dolls out due to my home repair. I barely visited one friend’s house to look at hers before I fell sick.

So I made this piece later in the year to remind me of the smoothly painted colourful dolls, the twinkling lights used in the decoration and the coconut used in the salad distributed during the festival. This necklace is available for sale.

So how do you like my Festival themed Riti jewellery? Just like the other pieces in this collections, these too are sensorial expressions of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures. As with journaling, I found this exercise extremely satisfying as it enabled me to take note of what I enjoy about each festival even if I no longer celebrate them. Please do share your thoughts.