Gratitude?

So Uttagirl called me up one day and said, “mom can I have a chain with a pendant that says gratitude in Sanskrit so I can remind myself to be grateful.”

I said “consider it done”. So she went on to send me a picture – a thin chain with a rectangular pendant and the words inscribed on it. Her preference was either white gold or silver. I looked up the word for gratitude in Sanskrit online and found there were two mentioned – Kritagnya and Kritagnyata. So I turned to a Sanskrit scholar friend, my sister and a few other folks and decided on the latter. I was all set to give the order to have it made, when my husband astutely said “you know the lettering should be in Sanskrit not English”. “Huhn?”, I muttered incredulously, not letting on that I had actually only intended for it be engraved in English lettering. My daughter who got wind of this conversation that happened in Toronto, way out in the UK, said “Ya mom, I cannot believe you had planned to have it engraved in English letters.” Now they were all mind-readers!

Anyway, the thing did not get ordered or made till my recent trip to India. Knowing Utta’s particular aesthetic sense, my sister Suja did not have the nerve to take on this mission and offered to go with me to the store when I was in Chennai. 10 days before my departure I still had this project weighing on my head. We finally made time to go to a known jeweller who named an outrageous price. He suggested also that the letters should not be engraved but should appear as letters and insisted also that we send him a printout of the word so the jeweller does not make any mistake in the spelling. This was all a bit much. We had not even asked him for the design ideas he was selling us on. So as not to displease him, we bought the chain from him but not trusting him to execute our chosen design, headed over to a silversmith located in tiny alley beside the Kapali temple lined with stores peddling temple jewellery that dancers wear. We found jewellers intently striking pieces of metal on an anvil and molding them on a small flame in that stuffy hole that passed off as their work space. We showed the owner the design and handed him the lettering. He said no problem, come back and pick it up next week and quoted us a fraction of the cost. It was as easy as that! The husband picked it up on the appointed day and we took a picture of it and sent it to Utta.

When I next checked my phone I found a message from the T girl which I then excitedly proceeded to open and read. One word said it all "Yikes". "What's wrong" I countered. "It’s all big and shiny. I was visioning something more delicate. That looks like a gang chain." I was rolling on the floor laughing. I said "Utta, what am I going to do with you?!" She said "Nada. Lol." I then pointed out "Gratitude?" She said "Yeah...its silver so I don't feel so bad if I have to change it." Did not sound like gratitude to me. Lol. But I grudgingly do have to agree with her!