This story is of the times when India wasn’t independent yet and in times when it was still known as Hindustan.
This story about the powerful oxidized earrings lady was narrated to me by my grandma when I was 10 years old. Ofcourse back then they weren’t really known as oxidized earrings in my culture but let’s just call them that for now since it has a word for it in my native toungue.
In those days times were completely different, either you wore oxidized earrings or you wore diamond ones, which meant either you were extremely rich or you were extremely poor perse.
Now since my grandma told me the store about the oxidized earrings, id presume that either she’s the protagonist or her mom was. Ofcourse there are more possibilities, but she did mention multiple protagonists in her story.
So lets just jump into the store that my grandma told me:
There was once a lady who had just gotten married and moved to her town. Her rickshaw stopped, and she got down near our door since she didn’t exactly know the way to her new home. They only jewellery that she had on her face was the pair of oxidized earrings. At my first glance they didn’t seem like a pair that one could make with hands. It didn’t seem like an ordinary pair of oxidized earrings. She asked me where her house was, I guided her there since I knew it was just adjacent to mine. Within the first week of staying in this new town she witnessed a lot of issues in the town especially the extensive existence of thieves being one of the biggest issues. Once while walking in the market she came across one such theif who tried to snatch her oxidized earrings but just couldn’t, the lady was just too quick for him. People around her could believe what they were looking at. Eventually the thief just got tired and walk off without a scratch but there was another thing that he walked off without and that’s oxidized earrings.
After that incident it was said that she’d leave her house at night and within a few months there were no more thieves in the town. Stories started to rumour about her but no one had the guts to go upto her and ask her if she oxidized earrings had actual powers. Several stories circled around her oxidized earrings say “that oxidized earrings were the last thing that I saw because it was too dark and those were the only things on her body that sparkled”, but after she allegedly saved them from thieves no one could ever say where she’d disappear into thin air. The lady’s name was jhumki, which actually means oxidized earrings.
Following all this the lady did age pretty normally like a normal human being. She had a girl child. And everyone somehow began to think that this couldn’t have been co-incidental. There were several attempts to steal her oxidized earrings along the way, but somehow even after being stolen, she always had them on her somehow. People also began to suspect of a second decoy pair of oxidized earrings. Theives couldn’t do what they wanted to anymore, and hence they conspired to kill the girl child that she had just had.
One night when she turned 5 she decided to put her oxidized earrings on her child and decided that it was time to let them go. She thought that if her baby would grow into those, she’d never feel like they’re a burden later on in life. The thieves decided to burn her house that night. The house literally burned to ashes. There was nothing left, but the girl child wearing the oxidized earrings rose like a phoenix absolutely unharmed. That day everyone had believed the oxidized earrings had magical powers and the community including I began to protect the girl child. Soon that girl child grew into a fine young girl and truly she was a spitting reflection of her graceful mother. She carried the oxidized earrings exactly like her mother.
She introduced new ways of managing the town and imparted knowledge and ways of managing water systems which ended up being entirely self sustaining for the entire town. The women had to never walk for miles in order carry water. The conspiracy theory was always that the oxidized earrings had special powers, but the truth was, it was always intent!