TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO:

 

The ring was actually found in a pouch in my mom's jewelry box.

 

The pouch has traveled with us from Kolkata to Dubai to Mississauga. So, the rings have been in there forever, I just didn't discover it until before I got married. So, it's almost like the ring didn't want to be discovered until that time. That's how I like to think about it. I only found it maybe back in 2017. And that's when I started wearing it because that time my wedding was also already planned. Like, we had a date and everything, sorry it was 2016. And then my mom said it looks really good on your finger. So, you can just like keep it. 

 

I have a habit of like taking off rings and looking at it and that's when I noticed that it had the two initials such as AJ, and my dad's name is Abhas which, it starts with 'A' my mom's name is Jharna. So, I was like, wow, that's so cool it has my parents initials. So, did my dad give it to her? I didn't think he was that romantic. I mean, I knew I used to buy stuff for when they were like courting, but I didn't think he'd go that extra mile so, that I started asking them and my dad's like, I would never buy her a ring with a stone like I bought her plain rings before. And my mom's like, yeah, I don't know where I got it. But I it's been here in this pouch forever.

 

The design is really really old fashioned like this is the kind of design I've seen on my grandmother's like jewelry and stuff. And so it’s, I feel like it's way older than 1970s and 1980s. It's also very Bengali, like this, you would see this kind of old fashioned jewelry and like on women in movies of Satyajit Ray, which are like these Bengali movies in like the 60s.

 

So it, it does connect me a lot to that culture because I was born in Kolkata and I am a Bengali, but at the same time having the initials of my parents on there, which from by some mysterious design also connects me to my parents. And I did wear it at my wedding.

 

My grandparents have passed away, there's nobody I can actually go. There's no like signature of the jeweler that I couldn't go look at. I asked my mom that and she said that it was probably from some like nondescript jewelry store in Kolkata, which probably doesn't even exist at this point. So, there's no way to like track it out. 

 

When I found the ring, it looked very like a bronze ring or like some kind of brown brownish color ring because it wasn't rust because gold doesn't rust, but because it hadn't been in that pouch for so long, it's like it became really dull, the shine was completely gone. But once I started wearing it, the shine just came back gradually - it wasn't this shiny before and then I realized it was a gold ring. And my mom told me that some things she just believes that something's being better to certain people and she believes this ring was meant for me because it looks so good on my hand. So, it just ended up in my possession.