Traditionally, Kerala state has been a Gold’s Own Country in India, with women in the state showing an inclination to buy gold jewellery whenever they get some extra cash.
But, that trend is changing. Ask any jewellery shop owner in Kerala. They will tell a different tale now. The modern Kerala women now want diamonds instead of gold. Because they have realized the charm of diamonds.
According to a leading jewellery shop in Kochi, increasingly Kerala women now prefer trendy delicate diamond jewellery to heavy gold ornaments due to soaring prices of the yellow metal.
The diamond jewellery business has seen about 30% growth in sales in 2009-10 fiscal. Jewellery shop owners say there is a gradual shift in consumer preference towards diamonds, but that the south Indian market is still largely a gold market.
In fact the new trend started around three years ago. Working women and IT professionals are not into heavy gold ornaments, which can be mostly worn only during weddings and cannot be used regularly.
However, even now, there are regular sales for traditional jewellery items. Kerala women used to wear heavy gold ornaments, but demand for 10 to 15 sovereign gold necklaces has come down, and women now prefer light-weight jewellery in gold and diamonds.
However, gold jewellery sales have gone down by 10-30% throughout the state, with interest in diamonds picking up from Kozhikode to Thiruvananthapuram.
Diamond is the hardest object on earth, strong enough to slice through glass and steel. Surprisingly, very little is known about its strength under extreme conditions. But Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL) scientists proved that diamond becomes even stronger during rapid compression.
Using the Janus laser at LLNL and the Omega laser at the University of Rochester, they showed that when shock waves are applied to diamond with powerful lasers, it can withstand nearly a million times atmospheric pressure before being crushed.
It could also provide insights into the ancient history of natural diamonds found on Earth and in meteorites, where shock waves caused by impact are common. Most natural diamonds are formed at high-pressure, high-temperature conditions existing at depths of 87 to 120 miles in the Earth’s mantle.
Carbon-containing minerals provide the carbon source, and the growth occurs over periods from 1 billion to 3.3 billion years.
Yekaterina Davydova, Rough&Polished Asian Bureau Editor in Beijing
