Bury the BAD rubies - a true story

[Guest guest]

The following is a gemstone story from my own experience. The lesson I learned

is that

only "good" quality gems are "lucky." In 1974 I was residing in the ancient

Himalayan

Village of Dhulikhel, Nepal when I received an urgent telegram from my old

friend Shyam.

His message was simple: "DISCOVERED RUBY MINE, COME IMMEDIATELY" and it ended

with

a contact in Hyderabad, South India.

 

When I arrived, Shyam showed me "buckets" full with rough and cut rubies soaking

in

jasmine oil. He also showed me an old Sanskrit text which described the mythical

origins

of the principal gemstones and certain guide lines on their use. One of the

verses stated

that flawless gems had auspicious talismanic powers, but defective stones were

evil and

inauspicious. As they didn't have high-powered microscopes in the ancient times

it stood

to reason that flawless meant "eye-clean." In any case, these secret, Hyderabad

rubies

were definitely NOT eye-clean.

 

The story unfolded of a "cursed" Indian family who had discovered a deposit of

"red

corundum" on their property. Fearing the Government, they kept their secret

until they ran

into good-old Shyam who offered to help. He promptly enlisted the financial

assistance of

(Ex-Beatle) George Harrison and actor Peter Sellers. With this money, he was

setting up

private cutting and polishing factories and he needed me to visit Bangkok and

check out

the possibilities. So with five kilos of rough rubies I proceeded to Thailand

where I had the

stones cut. In the meantime, Shyam had smuggled an enormous amount of rough and

cut

gems out of India and taken them to New York, the Mecca of Money.

 

In America he promptly joined forces with an unsavory character and bought a pet

lion.

Shortly thereafter he returned with his new friends to "really open up the

deposit" where

they hoped to find some "clear" rubies. To make a long story short, there was a

bull-dozer

accident, the police came, the whole thing was a fiasco, trunk loads of rough

rubies were

confiscated, and Shyam had to flee India with his gang. Oh! I forgot to mention,

the pet

lion fell from a 10th story Manhattan window and went splat, leaving Shyam with

a broken

marriage.

 

In the meantime, I took the cut rubies to Bali where I sold everything to the

local tourists

for $10 per carat (the cut stones were worth $10.-$100. per carat, compared to a

flawless

ruby which is worth $1,000 per carat, and up). I then returned to India, paid

the

Hyderabad family for their rubies and proceeded to Nepal for the grand-opening

of a

primary school which I had helped to finance in Dhulikhel. At this point my

business went

sour, I was blamed for selling cheap rubies cheap, I was cheated by a Nepali

partner, I was

cheated again by an American partner, and when Kali Baba's curse descended on

the

Nepali man I knew it was time to move on. The first thing I did was to bury

every last one

of those flawed rubies still in my possession. And that is my advice to anyone

who shows

me a really "flawed" gemstone: BURY IT! I remembered the old verse from the

ancient

Garuda-puranam which stated that flawed stones are bad luck while eye-clean gems

are

so auspicious that great sages and royalty of all ages eagerly sought them out.

 

MORAL: Only "eye-clean" gems are helpful and attractive, while visibly flawed

gems are

defective and disturbing.