At a Mumbai Jewelry Design Studio, Intellect Meets Art nytimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nytimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
As romantic fantasies go,
Pride and Prejudice has it all. An absurdly rich and terribly haughty Mr Darcy, patronising to all but secretly good. An intelligent, sharply witty Ms Bennet, sceptical about love only to fall for the very man she claims to despise. Secret longings that culminate in a passionate engagement, and then that lingering kiss at the very end… Anyone brave enough to tackle that without a hankie is foolhardy to say the least.
In 19
th century England, stringent rules governed the marriage proposal, which included a “courtship”, marshalled by chaperones, and delicate financial negotiations that ended hopefully in the father of the bride granting his permission. Thankfully a lot has changed since then – women ask men, men ask each other and paternal permission is no longer required. The rules of engagement have been totally re-written, but the ring and its symbolic merging of dynasties still matters, and a new breed of engagement ring consultant has