The golden boy

- Neeti Mehra

“I’m not really good with emails,” says Siddharth Kasliwal, partner and creative director at The Gem Palace, who is forking his way through a salad in a café just across their boutique in Mumbai. The 9th generation family member, son of the late Munnu Kasliwal, prefers a face-to-face conversation. Over a few weeks involving a barrage of cross country emails, phone calls and messages, I finally meet Kasliwal, who has returned to the city for just a day from London, and will depart for Jaipur the following morning.

For centuries, Mughal emperors descended on the one-time Agra-based Kasliwal family for their stunning whimsical pieces. Their relationship with royalty has persisted over the ages. In 1725, the family was invited by Maharaja Jai Singh II to become the crown jewellers. And with the patronage of the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Maharani Gayatri Devi, this patrician jewellery house, whose flagship store is located on Jaipur’s MI Road, has never required celebrity ambassadors to keep its mast flying high.

If Kasliwal is low on sleep, it does not show. He is brimming with ideas and apart from quirky gold enamelled cufflinks adorned with elephants, there is little visible sign that he is an integral part of a jewellery empire, which stretches from Japan to New York. An old school luxist, there is no topic that’s taboo for Kasliwal. He laments how luxury is losing its sheen in this virtual world. How deep and meaningful connections are important to the business. And how the luster and fire in a stone excites him. But he has a wry sense of honesty too. “I would be lying if I tell you that every piece at The Gem Palace is one-of-a-kind, but, at least 70 percent of our collection is special, and that means a lot.”