International Women’s Day
My mother was born in Jaipur as many of us know it as the Pink City, and eventually landed in the Bay Area — but her roots were so apparent despite 50 years in America. We visited India every year growing up. And then 2020 happened. Six years passed — years of unexpected challenges and some incredible joys. I got married, my daughter was born, my mother passed, my son was born and India became, for the first time in my life, somewhere I couldn’t get back to regularly.
This past January, I finally went back — the first time since she passed. With my husband (from Kentucky, seeing all of this for the very first time), and our two children: Adi, 18 months, and Pia, three years old. Taking them was equal parts terror and joy. But some things you do not because they are easy. You do them because you know despite the challenges the end result will be better than you ever imagined.
Pia, in Hindi, means beloved. My mother’s birth name was Sneh — which means love. I don’t think I chose Pia’s name by accident. Some things are passed down before you even understand you’re carrying them.
Where We Stayed · The Oberoi
A 30-hour journey with an 18-month-old and a three-year-old. The jet lag alone had me calculating worst-case scenarios for months and planning that led to the best trip I could have ever imagined.
We chose the Oberoi deliberately: one thing a day, no rushing, a home base that felt like a deep exhale. The attention they gave our children — the warmth, the care, the way they simply made sure we taken care of all in a luxurious setting that had Indian details throughout — And every morning, chai. Always chai. Hot, spiced, sweet — less a drink and more a warm hug in a cup. Chai is India’s love language, and I have been fluent in it my whole life. It’s also very much what Sethi Couture is about: that feeling of being wrapped in something beautiful and familiar.
By day three, my husband had already decided: we're coming back every year. The hospitality got him first, then the traditions, then the food, then the people. Watching someone you love discover a place you've carried your whole life — and watching them fall in love with it too. There are no words for it, really. A Bay Area girl, a Kentucky boy, and a city in India that belongs to both of us now.
Where We Sightsaw · Amber Fort, Panna Meena Ka Kund & City Palace
This is where Jaipur always takes my breath away — and where I was reminded why architecture and jewelry have always spoken the same language to us.
At Amber Fort, the immense feeling of history and architecture was profound. Standing in a fort built by kings, I thought about all the women who moved through these spaces — the queens, the mothers of dynasties, wearing jewelry that told a trained eye everything: her family, her city, her spirituality, her story.
Panna Meena Ka Kund — the ancient stepwell — is one of those places that stops you completely. Those geometric steps descending into deep, still water. Built so that women could collect water and bathe in privacy, yet adorned in architecture as carefully as any palace. The idea that someone would make a utilitarian structure this breathtaking — that even the practical had to be beautiful — is something I think about constantly in my own work. The geometry of that stepwell lives in our rings.
The City Palace — and its extraordinary Blue Room — showcases what is possible when craft is taken to its highest form. The Rajasthani tradition of adornment was built, as so many traditions of beauty are, by women, for women, as a form of self-expression that no one could take away. The colors, the patterns, the layering — all of it feeds directly into how we design. I left that palace inspired again and a full heart.
Where We Were Locals · Chudi Ka Rasta, Block Printing in Sanganer & Chai on the Streets
There is something about the city of Jaipur that embodies everything I love about India and the local destinations were by far the most exciting of our trip.
Chudi Ka Rasta is the kind of place you only find by getting a little lost — a narrow alleyway, tucked inside a maze you have to navigate on foot. Pia walked in and immediately got to work choosing colors for custom bangles, not just for herself but for her “gal pals” in preschool. Three years old, and she already knows: jewelry is something you give to the people you love. The shop was a generational small business — the owner, an elderly woman, told us it had been in her family for nine generations. Bangles in india are not accessories. They are punctuation marks. The sound of them is the sound of a woman moving through her day. For us, the love of stacking rings is just that — the ritual of putting them on every morning, part of your routine, part of who you are, your story.
Block printing in Sanganer was one of those perfect discoveries — hands-on, unhurried, and exactly the kind of experience that makes sense with small children
Pia sat at the table to press her own block print — over and over, the pattern emerging slowly and deliberately. The repetition. The way something so simple becomes, over time, something so complex and alive. This is the same philosophy behind our Sethi stacking rings: one ring tells a story, but the stack tells your whole life. Each one a layer. Each one a memory.
And the chai on the streets — passed through a window in a tiny clay cup, sweet and perfect. India is a country that loves generously and openly. Old women reached for Adi’s and Pia’s cheeks. Strangers offered biscuits. I found myself whispering Hindi to the kids without planning it — dekho (look), sundar (beautiful), chai peeyo (drink your tea). My mother’s first language, reaching for the next generation.
My mother, Sneh — whose name meant love, whose city was Jaipur — passed her world to us the way important things get passed: without a single formal lesson. Through proximity. Through watching. Through a childhood spent near a woman who understood that beauty is a form of devotion.
When I came home, I wanted to add another stacking ring to my stack – for the new year but also after a trip that felt changed me. And so my stack this year begins with the Sethi Couture pink sapphire ring — pink for the sandstone walls, pink for the city at dusk, pink for my mother Sneh who loved pink but also for her hometown.
I added the Petite Bubble ring in pink sapphire to our collection — a nod to the Pink City, a tribute to Sneh, and a reminder that the most meaningful things we wear are the ones that carry someone we love. It’s made to stack, the way all our rings are, because your story is never just one ring. It’s all of them together.
We went to Jaipur to honor the women who made us. We came home having found, in Pia’s and Adi’s upturned faces — and in my Kentucky husband’s wide-open wonder — everything worth making beautiful for.
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Happy International Women’s Day.