The tinkle of anklets betrays more than footsteps. How close is their wearer? How heavy the stride, how eager or stealthy? Anklets don’t need to be seen—nor the ankles themselves—to announce desire, hesitation, age or injury. A faint chime can whisper mischief; a bold one can declare arrival; a heavy clank warns of wrath.
Cinema knows this well. Horror has long used anklets to announce the uncanny—the sound arrives before the apparition, exacerbating dread in Tumbbad (2018) or countless ghost stories. In the world of cinema, jewellery carries psychological tension, erotic promise or social code.
In Umrao Jaan (1981), Nawab Sultan, struck silent by Umrao’s poetic brilliance, removes his necklace and places it at her feet. “In Umrao Jaan or Pakeezah (1972), jewels mark allure but also vulnerability—objects of desire, yet tokens women exchange for survival,” adds Dr Usha Balakrishnan, a curator and art historian. Designers extend this dialogue. “Sometimes, we say our jewellery is ‘costume drama meets subculture’,” says Aashna Singh of The Olio Stories.
Few cinematic devices compress as much meaning as the mangalsutra. Tugged until it snaps, it enacts heartbreak—marriage, identity, selfhood fractured in a single gesture. In classic suhaag raat sequences, the slow unclasping of a necklace stands in for undressing.
Jewellery rescues. Time and again, women pawn their bangles or necklaces to keep households afloat; cinema knows this grammar well, from the mother in Mother India (1957) to countless melodramas where a chain is sold to pay for survival “The paradox of Indian jewellery,” Balakrishnan notes, “is its ambivalence: as stridhan, it promised autonomy; as dowry, it became a burden. The same bangles that save could also shackle.”
Jewellery scripts character. Costume designer Eka Lakhani and jewellery designer Pratiksha Prashant, who worked on Ponniyin Selvan (2022), went to temples to look for inspiration to create signature pieces to define each role.
The same principle plays out in Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahani (2023). Costume design makes their personalities legible before dialogue: Rocky, a flamboyant Punjabi boy, glitters in heavy chains and oversized rings, while Rani, a cerebral journalist, wears chiffon saris and a clipped nose pin—delicate but pointed. Their contrasts of class and temperament are made glaringly visible through ornament.
In Gangubai Kathiawadi (2022), the nath utrai ceremony—the ritual removal of the nose ring—marks Gangubai’s forced initiation into sex work, a stripping away of innocence. Later, dressed in white, she reclaims the tarnished silver nath as her emblem: pride worn against a society that denies dignity to sex workers.
Jewellery bends time. In 2004’s Veer-Zaara, after decades of separation, Veer pulls from his pocket the anklet he has guarded during his years in prison. As he bends to clasp it onto Zaara’s foot, she lifts her salwar to reveal the other anklet, worn all along. He looks up, she smiles, the camera lingers on two anklets—together, whole, their reunion made wordless in metal.
Jewellery withholds. In Piku (2015), the film’s lead character is a young architect in Delhi who wears no bangles, chain or nose ring. Her minimalism embodies independence, refusing ornament as shorthand for duty or desire.
Jewellery hardens and softens. In the 2023 crime drama series Saas Bahu Aur Flamingo, the women running a drug empire wear oxidised bangles and thick kadas like weapons—tribal, guttural, unapologetic. “Silver has a very different personality from gold or diamonds,” says Tarang Arora of Amrapali. “Gold feels ceremonial, diamonds aspirational, but silver is personal, grounded. It grows old with you, gains character. On screen, it can suggest rebellion or resilience.”
Jewellery defies. Bhima Jewellery’s ‘Pure As Love’ ad from 2021 traced a trans woman’s transition from childhood to marriage entirely through ornaments. Like tradition breaking at the clasp, brides now swipe their own cards for mangalsutras. Indie ateliers—Kavya Potluri, Suhani Pittie—turn haath phools and tribal motifs into gender-fluid armour, worn to dinners, protests, concerts.
“Indian jewellery goes much beyond mere ornamentation, it is a complete aesthetic system,” says Balakrishnan. “It is art, talisman, archive and desire, the enduring chronicle of a civilisation.” From bridal gold to tarnished silver, from crowns to pawnbroker shelves, jewels trace the arc of characters and stories. They carry cinema’s pulse.
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