Square Stone Payal with Pearl Clusters and Ghungroo

Payal is simply the Hindi word for an anklet, and in most of India it is still the first piece of jewellery a girl is given and the last an older woman takes off. It is worn as a pair, one on each ankle, and traditionally it was meant to be heard as much as seen — the sound announced that someone was coming, which in a joint household was a courtesy rather than a performance.

The design

The squares are what make this one. Each stone is cut flat and square and then set on its point, so it reads as a diamond rather than a block, and each sits in a deep bezel with a milled border and a blackened field around it. Setting a square stone on point is a deliberate choice: it turns a static shape into a moving one, and it lets the links sit corner to corner so the whole line zigzags gently round the ankle instead of lying as a straight band.

From the junction between every pair of squares hangs a small cluster of pearl-white beads, three or four to a cluster, which catch the light low down where the metal does not. At the centre, where the two halves of the anklet meet, is a small pierced heart-shaped link carrying two large ghungroo bells — properly round, properly hollow, and loud enough to hear.

How it wears

That gives the piece three different textures doing three different jobs: flat bright stone, soft matt pearl, and polished bell. It is more variety than most anklets at this price attempt, and it is why this one still looks interesting after you have worn it a few times.

Materials used

A word on the stones, because it matters when you are choosing a colour. These are glass and cubic zirconia, not gemstones, cut and polished and set by hand into closed metal bezels. That is the traditional setting for Indian costume jewellery and it does two useful things: the closed back holds the stone securely against the knocks an anklet takes, and it puts a dark oxidised rim around every stone so the colour reads clearly instead of washing out against the metal.

Shades and stock

It also means the colours are saturated rather than subtle. A sea green here is a true green-blue, a ruby is a deep pink-red, and the baby pink is pale and milky rather than bright. The photographs on each swatch are of that exact colourway, so trust them over the colour name.

Four colourways are stocked. Multi is the one in the main photograph and sets a different colour in each square — white, red, yellow, black — which is the traditional arrangement and the most versatile. Ruby, Baby Pink and Green each run a single colour the whole way along, which is quieter and reads as a more deliberate choice with a matching outfit.

German silver is the trade name for a bright white alloy of copper, nickel and zinc. It contains no silver at all. What it does have is a hard, cool-toned surface that takes an oxidised finish well and resists scratching better than plated brass, which is why almost every everyday Indian anklet is made to look like it.

This is a good festival anklet — the bells are audible, the pearls move, and it photographs well. It is also one of the few stone-set anklets here that is not too precious for ordinary wear, because nothing projects far enough to catch.

A note on wearing a pair rather than one. Single anklets have become common and there is nothing wrong with wearing one, but a pair sits differently: the two sounds fall slightly out of step as you walk, which is what produces the soft irregular jingle people associate with payal rather than a single repeating note.

Care

An anklet lives a harder life than any other piece of jewellery. It meets shoes, floors, door frames and bedsheets, and it is the piece most likely to be worn into the shower because taking it off is a nuisance. Water is what dulls an oxidised finish fastest and it is also what loosens a bezel-set stone over time, so slip it off before bathing. A dry soft cloth is the whole cleaning routine — never a silver polish or a dip, which strip the blackening the design depends on and can fog the stones.