Making malas out of money

Pankaj Roshanlal Jain,who last fashioned a garland worth Rs 1 lakh for a local political leader a year ago,couldn’t agree more. “The way the mala is well-rounded and heavy,as though it’s made of flowers,you can tell it’s not from around here. Here,we make flat malas with golden paper and beads and zari,” he says.

It doesn’t take a Mayawati to sport a garland of glorified paper. What’s a Punjabi wedding without a floral veil and a garland of money for the groom,asks Pawar Kumar Jain,of Prem Collections. And while he concedes that modern,educated families are doing away with such flamboyance,he says it is not uncommon for NRIs to bring their dollars and pounds to be turned into wearable money.

Be it for the odd “chamcha” who wishes to find favour with a neta,or for anxious fathers-in-law-to-be,these shops in Delhi’s biggest wedding market will turn bundles of notes into wearable money in less than half an hour for a charge of a few hundred rupees,depending on the embellishments. The money comes in a sweeping range of denominations. “It ranges from Rs 10 to Rs 1,000,but anything above Rs 100 is rare. The number of notes,too,varies. We tell customers that 100 notes make a good-looking mala,” says Pradip Jain,of Prem and Brothers,a century-old shop dealing in wedding adornments. He adds that “certain Muslims favour Rs 1,000 notes” and the garland,offered to the groom during the wedding,is often worth Rs 1 lakh-1.5 lakh.

Kumar blames the re-emergence of the embroidered sherwani in the past few years — “it’s a recycled trend,” he notes — for the perceptible reverse trend in the ceremonious note ki mala. Grooms don’t want the notes to mar “the show” of their designer coats,he says. “I used to make anything between 500 and 1,000 garlands in a year. Now I barely get 200-300 orders,” says Kumar. “Times are changing. This 300-year-old shop has changed too,from selling Banarasi saris and borders and gota to decorative articles now.”

The year is a lean one for weddings and business is slack. Nothing conveys this better than a sparse string of Rs 10 bills that hangs on a hook in Kumar’s shop,limp and none the richer for all its golden tassels shimmering in the dusk.