E-Paper
Discovering India through earrings
For German doctor Ganguly, an earring is more than a piece of jewellery; it is the symbol of a race, its culture, its customs and its idiosyncrasies.
She has an enviable collection of 400 earrings from the four corners of India, but Waltraud Ganguly is neither Indian nor has she pierced earlobes to show off her treasure.
For German doctor Ganguly, an earring is more than a piece of jewellery; it is the symbol of a race, its culture, its customs and its idiosyncrasies.
And over the last eight years, she has travelled 40,000 km across the length and breadth of India, visiting some states more than once, collecting the baubles just to learn more about the country.
Married to a Germany-based Indian teacher, Ganguly's quest for different kinds of earrings worn by Indian women became a journey into the life and soul of the country of a billion-plus.
"Being married to an Indian, I had an inside view and always felt at home, not only in my own Indian family," Waltraud Ganguly told IANS in an interview.
"I felt sad seeing some traditions dying in the last 10 to 15 years, and as a grateful contribution to the country of my husband, I decided to document at least a small, but very important part of culture -- ear ornaments."
In the past eight years, Ganguly has visited Assam, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
She and her husband toured the states systematically and district-wise, interviewing goldsmiths and dealers, and specially people.
"We put together all information we got, creating a reference sheet for each and every earring type."
The result -- 177 different types of earrings representing different communities or tribes or castes and some "fascinating and rewarding" research.
She learnt during her travels that for village and tribal women, earrings were not just jewellery; they meant protection, investment and identification with their social group.
Since earrings worn by one group were often not worn by another, Ganguly had to school herself.
She collected literature, some dating back to the British rule, on all tribes, castes and social groups.
Her own earring collection from New Delhi, Germany and other places she has travelled comprises some 500 pairs. Each piece is special, she claims, and she has no personal favourite.
"Like a mother, I love all my children. I do not wear earrings myself... I don't even have pierced earlobes!"
Born and educated in Germany, Ganguly learnt the value of collecting after her family lost most of its possessions in World War II.
She soon developed a fascination for India and in 1971, tied permanent bonds with the country as she wed a Bengali engineer in Kolkata.
Ganguly's husband accompanied her and helped in translating her English for village folk into Hindi, Bengali and Assamese.
The woman remarked: "I could not tell which place I like most - the mountains with their kind inhabitants, or Rajasthan of the proud Rajputs, or Gujarat with the distinctively different Rabri (condensed milk sweet), the devout people and beautiful temples of the south...
"A woman myself, I admired from the very beginning the appearance of even the poorest beggar woman, who in her torn sari would still have the grace and elegance of a lady."
The most unusual piece in her collection is from the desert city of Jaisalmer in Rajasthan.
Ganguly describes it thus: "A pair of discs shaped in a long, asymmetrical excrescence, weighing 150 grams and made of gold appliques on a heavy silver disc, with a diameter of seven centimeters."
