Nitesh Tiwari’s film adaptation of the Indian epic, Ramayana, has finally hit the theatres. Made on a budget of Rs 4000 crore, most of it was made in India. From DNEG’s VFX to Rimple and Harpreet Narula’s costumes. Even the jewellery of the entire film has been customized, handcrafted, and supplied by Tribe Amrapali, a global brand born out of Jaipur, Rajasthan. The brand had earlier collaborated with SS Rajamouli’s blockbuster Telugu action epic franchise Baahubali and Kangana Ranaut’s 2019 period drama Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi in the past. However, its Creative Director and CEO Tarang Arora insists Ramayana is their most monumental undertaking for the big screen yet.Inside Ramayana’s jewellery“The challenge is not that a project is monumental. I think that is what everyone’s looking for: to be able to do some or be associated with monumental things, right?,” Arora tells SCREEN in an exclusive interview. “For us, the main issue was to be able to make jewellery and design jewellery for so many characters. When we have done movies before, the characters we design for are one or two, but in this, we have so many characters,” he adds. From the primary characters of Rama (Ranbir Kapoor), Sita (Sai Pallavi), Yash (Ravana), Lakshman (Ravie Dubey) to supporting ones like Dasharatha (Arun Govil), Kaikeyi (Lara Dutta), Shurpanakha (Rakul Preet Singh), and Vidyuthjiva (Vivek Oberoi), the list is endless.“It was more stressful, or I’d say more eventful, to not just make one movie; you are actually part of maybe making 10 movies, or the work is equivalent to 10 movies, because there are so many characters, and each character is powerful. To keep them relevant, yet keep all the looks very different, was the challenging part,” argues Tarang. Jewellery not only serves the purpose of adornment in the film, but is also a key narrative device, given Sita drops her jewellery from Pushpak Vimana for Rama to trace her to Lanka.Ayodhya’s elegance vs Lanka’s opulenceThe contrast was the most stark while designing the jewellery for Ayodhya, the kingdom of Rama, as opposed to Lanka, that of Ravana, the chief antagonist. While the latter, hailed as “Sone Ki Lanka” is decked up in gold and screaming opulence, Ayodhya is more understated. “Of course, if you think about it, the main characters — which are Rama, Sita, and Lakshman — they are not even wearing that much jewellery because they are in the forest most of the time. The jewellery is worn by everyone else. “Of course, there’s a lot of jewellery, but it is not OTT (over the top). Lanka is definitely OTT,” points out Tarang.The jewellery for Rama, Sita, and Lakshman gets even subtler as the film progresses, once the trio set out for their vanvas (exile). “Minimal was definitely the key for us because you have to realize that they are not technically ruling at that time. They are in the jungle, so jewellery has to be minimal. I think very few objects are really flamboyant, if at all. They look very basic, but then Ravana looks extremely flamboyant. So, I think doing that was a bit challenging,” he says.Was there fear that in the process of making Ravana extremely flamboyant, it would dim the shine of the protagonist, Rama? “I think Rama is definitely looking opulent. He’s looking OTT when needed. The difference is just that Ramayana is when Rama is primarily in the jungle, right? So, there is no opulence to be shown there. But when the opulence is needed to be shown, it’s there,” says Tarang, following it up with what he dubs as a “very weird example”. “It’s like when in two weddings, one bride is wearing polki jewellery and looking really out there, the other has layered maybe five necklaces and is looking very delicate. But they both look great. That’s the best way I can describe it,” he adds.But even for the same character, the jewellery didn’t stay consistent throughout the film. For instance, as Sita evolved from the daughter of Janak in Mithila to the wife of Rama in Ayodhya, her jewellery also evolved with her. “Her circumstances are different, and she gets married into a different atmosphere. So, her motifs and floral designs switch with the change in the flora and fauna around her. That’s the detailing with which you have to get into to design every character,” says Tarang. For those who’d assume that the maximum jewellery was worn by Sita through the film, they’d be wrong. It was actually Ravana, who he described as the toughest to design for across the two-part film.Story continues below this ad“Ravana was the king of the land, which was the land of gold. He had to be shown as extremely opulent. The kind of yin and yang that Ravana has, we had to play around with his jewellery. We’ve used different motifs in Ravana’s jewellery, depending on the phase he was in — snake, demon face, animal face, and a trishul (trident), since he was a Lord Shiva devotee. Even within the same look, there were many contradictions, from one hand of Ravana to another,” says Tarang, referring to the demon’s unpredictable 10-faced personality.Response to inauthenticity claimsEver since the first trailer of Ramayana was released earlier this year, came claims on social media that the jewellery used in the film is not true to the times the epic is set in. Most fingers were pointed at Sita’s wedding scene, in particular, with an X user claiming there was no jadau jewellery back in the day. “Do we know that? What they’re saying is maybe correct. What I’m trying to say is, do we know what jewellery was there at that time? If they do, I’ll be happy to work on that,” responds Tarang. “There is no jadau jewelry. I don’t agree that there has been jadau jewelry used, but yes, I still say there could be a possibility. The problem is that we don’t know. We have to assume, to the best of our knowledge,” he adds.He reveals that a lot of inspiration came from Raja Rami Varma’s paintings, which depicted how gods and goddesses dressed. “If we go to Nathdwara or any Krishna ji temple, the jewellery what he is wearing, was he wearing jewellery like that for real back in the day? We don’t know, but I think what we are trying to do here is create a look which is closest, and of course a look which is going to glorify them and make them larger than life. Of course, it’s a symbolism of being a god or someone who was ruling at that time. These are speculations,” clarifies Tarang, insisting that it’s part of “the whole charm of glorifying our god”.Tarang also hailed Ramanand Sagar’s 1987 television show Ramayan and BR Chopra’s 1988 Mahabharata adaptation as “benchmarks”, and his brand’s interpretation a “continuation” of that “perception”. “Do we know if people were living in clouds and if there were flying objects and if half-human, half-animal gods and goddesses and and super beings existed? So, there are so many different questions,” he says, reiterating his argument. Ramayana, believed to be set during the Treta Yuga, with sage Valmiki’s Sanskrit epic estimated to date back to sometime between 750 BCE and 500 BCE.Story continues below this adRamayana a triumph of Indian craftsmanshipTarang revealed that all the jewellery that will be seen in both parts of the Ramayana have been made completely by hand, from gemstones sourced and cut locally in Jaipur. “On an average, for over two-and-a-half years, we’ve had about 150 craftsmen working on this. We have no count of how many designs have actually been made, to be honest with you. Because a piece was redesigned again and again unless we found or we felt that we have now achieved what we wanted,” he claims.“We definitely created over 4,000 individual pieces for the movie. Now, I actually have lost count, whether 4,000 were actually approved and made after we’d designed 8,000 or 10,000 designs. It’s very labour-intensive and cumbersome. Sometimes, the design team also gets burnt out. You have to start thinking out of the box. If you’ve been working on a project for so long, then you need to change designers. The designers need to figure out a different perspective. You need to read different books and different ideas need to come from there,” he adds.With Artificial Intelligence on the rise, Tarang feels sticking to crafting jewellery by hand gains even more significance. “AI is taking over a lot of things. But I think human touch and that soul, which you provide to any art, cannot be taken away. So, I think it’s very important to have human intervention, human thought process, human soul, and handcraftsmanship,” he says. “Everyone takes help of AI. Everyone takes help of technology because it is there to make your life easier. But we don’t treat it as a replacement of handcraftsmanship. You can ask it to do things swiftly, but the idea has to be a human idea, and the implementation has to be human,” he adds.Also Read — Ramayana box office collection prediction day 1: Ranbir Kapoor’s film eyes Rs 160 cr, trails DhurandharStory continues below this adTarang also expressed his gratitude to director Nitesh Tiwari and producer Namit Malhotra of DNEG to give an impetus to India’s karigar community. “I hope that this is a realization that Indian craftsmanship, Indian jewellery, Indian hand work, and the karigars are so important. And we need to regularly celebrate them in movies, theatre, art, and everything,” he says. Co-produced by Yash’s Monster Mind Creations, Ramayana has been adapted for the screen by Tiwari and Shridhar Raghavan. Part 2 is slated to release in cinemas worldwide in 2028.