Bendale and Symbolic Interactionism in the Bunt Community

My grandmother kept a pair of diamond earrings she called bendale. They weren’t unusual — almost every woman in my family had them — but to me they were tiny mysteries. Seven diamonds clustered like a flower, sometimes delicate as a jasmine bud, sometimes so heavy they dragged the earlobe down as if the earrings themselves were weary of society’s gaze. I grew up watching them sparkle at weddings and funerals alike, wondering why this single design had captured so many ears and so much meaning.

I was always curious about jewellery as a kid, ever since I found out the reason why Bunt women who get married wear a voddungila. The story I grew up with was that the voddungila was carved out of a single block of gold with no soldering done. It was a never-ending ring. It symbolised how the girl always had ties to her matrilineal home. Usually, the voddungila is given to the bride the night before her muhurtha. She is given a pair of toe rings worn on the second toe, which they say had scientific benefits too. Usually made of silver, the toe rings provided acupressure and improved blood circulation, regulated menstrual cycles, and ensured reproductive health.

So the bride’s Maami, or the father's sister, gave her the toe rings and the voddungila, promising their support and wishing them fertility and overall good health. I found that beautiful. So I asked my grandmother about the diamond earrings. She told me there wasn't really a story there. Everyone had it.

Pfft, she thought I'd let it go. As if. I went down a rabbit hole, asking women and asking women to ask women, determined to get to the bottom of why the bendale was of value. It was made mostly of diamonds that, at the time, carried less resale and ritual value than gold. Gold could be pawned, melted, or passed down; it was liquid wealth. Diamonds, on the other hand, were brittle as currency. Yet the bendale was everywhere. Everyone I knew had it.(Much to the horror of my grandmother)

Turns out the bendale wasn't even a Bunt tradition or rooted in Bunt culture. Bunts were rich in gold, silver, and copper. Everything they wore was rooted in Ayurveda and acupuncture and, let’s be honest, also in vanity. The misr sara, the lakshmi bale were very rooted in Bunt tradition, each with a unique story. The gili ole and the navilu sara paid tribute to the peacocks that roamed our lands. The pavan sara too had a beautiful story behind it. But the bendale? A cultural hitchhiker.

The diamond bendale was brought to Bunts in Tulunadu by women who came back to visit after their trip to the United Kingdom in the mid-20th century. And this is where De Beers enters the stage.

De Beers and the Invention of Desire

For most of human history, diamonds were not particularly rare. In fact, by the late 19th century, large diamond mines in South Africa had made them plentiful. Enter De Beers, a mining company that in 1888 consolidated its control of supply. De Beers understood that scarcity creates value, so they tightly controlled distribution, stockpiling diamonds to keep prices high. But scarcity alone wasn’t enough. They had to create desire.

In 1947, the slogan “A Diamond is Forever” was born. It was more than an ad line; it was cultural engineering. De Beers convinced entire generations that diamonds symbolised eternal love, that no engagement was complete without one. Movie stars were gifted stones to show them off, magazines carried stories equating diamonds with status, and young men were taught to measure their devotion in carats. It was brilliant sociology disguised as marketing: a symbol was attached to a stone, and that symbol became gospel.

By the time Bunt women began traveling to London in the mid-20th century, the campaign was in full swing. The flower-cluster motif of the bendale may have been a direct echo of De Beers’ design language. What mattered was not the resale value of those diamonds (still lower than gold), but the symbolic value imported from the West: sophistication, status, love that lasts forever. And when one woman in Tulunadu brought that design back, others imitated it until the imitation became tradition.

Diamonds vs. Gold

Gold, in contrast, has always carried intrinsic, ritual, and economic weight in Tulunadu. Gold was liquid wealth. You could pawn it, melt it, remake it. It anchored rituals from birth to death. A voddungila or lakshmi bale was not only ornament but also insurance, dowry, and medicine rolled into one. Bunts stored their prosperity in gold because it held value across generations and across geographies.

Diamonds, by comparison, were newcomers. Stones made valuable not by tradition or utility, but by story. A De Beers story, to be exact. Gold had inherent worth. Diamonds had engineered worth. Yet in a community obsessed with appearances, engineered worth was enough. When status is a performance, the stage prop doesn’t need to be ancient. It only needs to be recognisable.

How Diamonds Are Valued Today

The irony is that diamonds are still not as scarce as the price tag suggests. Their value is propped up by continued marketing, by the cultural inertia of a century-old campaign, and by the social capital attached to wearing them. Today, natural diamonds compete with lab-grown diamonds, which are chemically identical but often dismissed as “lesser” because they lack the aura of natural rarity. Among Bunt women in the 2020s, the jeweller’s whispered knowledge of who bought lab-grown vs. natural is enough to shift reputations. The science doesn’t matter. The symbolism does.

So the bendale is a perfect example of symbolic interactionism in action. A non-traditional ornament, imported by accident of travel and advertising, became a marker of belonging and wealth in Tulunadu. Its meaning was not inherent in the stones, but in the interactions. In the side-eyes at weddings, the gossip at kitty parties, the jeweller’s ledger, and the collective agreement that seven little diamonds could carry the weight of status.

The Social Life of Jewellery

You have to understand that Bunt women, whether in the 1900s or in the 2020's have very eventful social lives. In the 1900s, they went to maddme's (weddings), bojja's (funerals), illokell's (housewarmings), thottil paduna (cradle ceremonies), and so much more. Their calendars were fuller than a politician’s during election season. Bunt families in the 1900s had a lot more to do in their social circles. They had to visit homes, they had visitors, they had dinners to host and attended their local mahila sabha.

Their weeks were busier than a politician’s in election season.

Fast-forward to today, and the same events still fill the calendar, only now they are joined by aata nights, kitty parties, and birthdays with balloon arches and return gifts. The performance continues, just with more balloons.

Most Bunt men before 1975 owned businesses. When I say this, I want to emphasise that Bunts remain entrepreneurial, but post-1975 most ventured into professional endeavours, working for other businesses. Before 1975, they either owned a family business or a solo enterprise. Although women in Bunt societies after the exodus to Bombay and Madras stayed home more, they still were their families' brand ambassadors. How they appeared at these social events was a telltale sign not only of the family wealth but also of the health of the business.

If a hotelier’s wife wore a massive diamond bendale to the wedding of her cousin that May, all eyes were on her. Her husband's business was obviously thriving, 'ijjinda volthuddhu?' Hence, she wore the massive bendale and the kaaji (bangles) on her arm were diamonds too. A dazzling balance sheet on display.

If the industrialist’s wife and daughters turned up in only a plain gold chain, whispers started before dessert was served. “Her hands are bare,” someone would murmur, and by the time the news had circled the hall, it had become a full story: the business must be in trouble. Rumours, in Tulunadu, spread faster than ghee on hot dosa.

Bunt women are also the sharpest observers of any demographic I have studied. They can clock and rolodex what you have worn and how many times you have repeated it. "She wore the same sari," "same two bangles"—not good indicators for how the family was doing, but great for small talk.

But how does that matter, you ask? Another thing you have to understand about Bunts is that we remain a vanity-driven society, and we attach value to people too. We ostracise those we think are falling from the threshold we have set for our social circles, we chase those who are rising above that threshold, and we mingle with those at equilibrium with us.

This is where sociology helps us see the patterns. Thorstein Veblen called it conspicuous consumption, the way people spend not for utility but to display status. Erving Goffman compared social life to theatre: each of us playing roles, carefully managing impressions before our audience. And George Herbert Mead, the father of symbolic interactionism, would remind us that meaning is made in these very exchanges. The sari repeated, the earring displayed, the diamond whispered about. The bendale is not just an ornament. It is a social script.

We don’t factor in a wheel of fortune where everyone has their ups and downs. In our world, it’s always up, never down, or at least pretend so convincingly that no one can tell the difference.

This had consequences for overall family well-being. Women fought at home, even in financially sick situations, to maintain outward appearances. Men held onto facades even when they were struggling. Kids were over-monitored in case they dropped hints of family secrets. The bendale and its size and clarity became the silent saviour, the glittering placebo that kept the façade alive.

But who cares about society? Well, here's another thing you have to understand. Tulunadu is small. Your society is where you get your business from. If your business shows indicators of a loss, the herd travels elsewhere. If you indicate success, more droves gather to your doorstep. A single earring could shift the tide of gossip and commerce.

So that hotelier's wife wearing that diamond bendale was extremely important.

Vulnerability in Bunts is considered a weakness, and yes, many may think of how backward that is or how unhealthy that is, but it is a truth of this society. The only vulnerability you are allowed to have is if you are struggling with trivial inconveniences. Anything larger, and you risk exile from the circle.

The bendale as you climbed up the social hierarchy and went to the topmost of Bunt social circles had changes. Let's cut to the 2020's. The bendale is no longer a signal of wealth and prosperity of a family in the upper echelons of the Bunt community. It has now been replaced with Tiffany’s and Cartier’s. Some women tell their jeweller that they could never buy lab-grown and only natural diamonds, even though many would never know. Their argument was that they shared a jeweller with other Bunt women from the same circles and what if word got out that they bought lab-grown? Heaven forbid the horror.

But jewellery is not the only thing that Bunts give value to. They place value on things based on the symbolic interactionism placed on certain things. For instance, let’s take the example of Chennamma Shetdi, an affluent woman in the Bunt community. Everyone knows her husband's business is thriving because they've seen it. They have seen the bendale Chennamma's mother wore, 'adaaga', years ago. They know she comes from old money. She set the threshold for her social circles. Chennamma decides that Cartier is her new brand and wears Cartier earrings. Everyone in her circle who have collectively and quietly agreed that she sets the trend for wealth, chase and buy Cartier or equivalent to remain relevant in that circle. And relevance again, remains important for business. The doctor’s wife, too, needs to remain relevant for her husband to garner more patients from their circle. And the lawyer needs to maintain relevance, too, because if she’s donning Tiffany’s for breakfast, her law practice must be thriving.

Chennamma's cousin, who isn’t included in this social circle of affluence due to her own financial position, doesn’t aim to climb there, but uses Chennamma’s clothes as a threshold for herself and creates that threshold in her own social circles. And Chennamma's cousin Pooakka has gained legitimacy through her affiliation by blood to Chennamma and thereby is considered an influencer in her own kitty party.

The Bendale created that ripple effect in the 1900s that has continued to take shape in different forms today. Chennamma now says her son will be a doctor, and suddenly, three others want their kids to be doctors too. History repeating, this time not in seven diamonds but in seven medical degrees waiting to bloom.

Stones, Symbols, and Choices

So what does all this mean? From a sociological perspective, the bendale is a textbook example of how meanings are socially constructed and maintained. From a behavioural economics lens, it shows how humans make irrational decisions, choosing diamonds, which have little intrinsic value, over gold, which has liquidity, ritual depth, and historical security, because the signal matters more than the substance. People don’t buy the diamond. They buy the story, the envy, the whisper at the kitty party.

George Herbert Mead, who shaped symbolic interactionism, argued that objects have no inherent meaning. Meaning arises in the ways people use them, talk about them, and respond to them in daily interactions. A diamond is not valuable because it is rare, but because people collectively agree that it stands for love, power, and permanence. Gold carries both inherent and symbolic value, while diamonds are almost entirely symbolic. In Tulunadu, this distinction mattered less than the performance. The bendale became valuable not because of geology, but because of gossip.

Gold anchors. Diamonds perform. Gold protects. Diamonds proclaim. And in Tulunadu, where society doubles as marketplace, it is often the proclamation that keeps the customers coming. That is why seven little diamonds, borrowed from a London jeweller’s design, could ripple through generations of Bunts and still shape choices today.

In the end, a bendale is not forever. But the meanings we build around it last as long as we keep performing them.

Disclaimer: This was just an essay that was purely to understand the Bunt community as part of a larger study

P.S. Did you miss me?

P.P.S. Genuine question, diamonds or gold ?