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The next afternoon De Taillac directs a driver to the Nawab Ka Choraya neighborhood, jammed with gem shops and throngs of small-time brokers showing their packets in the street. "Did you notice I took off my jewelry?" she says, smiling. "They copy." How to describe the chaos—with monkeys swinging in and out of dilapidated, baroque façades, sugarcane presses spewing smoke, and dozens of men (there are very few women in sight) pursuing De Taillac. "Hallooo, halloo. You buy emeralds. You want Indian rubies?" they cry, tugging at her clothes, and when she stops to look over a handful of lemon quartz, she causes a traffic jam.
Everywhere one hears the piercing screech of the cutting wheels. It's crazy to watch precious stones being negotiated by people standing in spit and piles of garbage. And why is there no security? Everyone appears to have his pockets stuffed with stones, but there is only the occasional camera, some padlocks here and there and a few guards. "They are very casual about the gems. They've always lived with it," offers De Taillac.
HARI RAM SON, MOHAND CHAND & SONS, GOVIND GEMS, NP JAIN, RM BUMB read the signs on the shop stalls. Pitliya Jewellers has a table with a plastic washbasin filled with pearls. Jain families—members of an ascetic religious group that observes strict dietary rules—run the businesses; Muslims are the expert craftsmen. Later I notice a poster of Mecca in a workshop where four men facet lemon quartz in a weird green glow. Gauri Shankar Dangayach, production manager of one of Gem Palace's cutting units, leads De Taillac down several side streets with open gutters and into one of a dozen look-alike buildings. We go up the labyrinthine stairs and suddenly arrive in a tidy workshop with a magnificent view of Jaipur. "What are you cutting?" De Taillac asks here and at other workshops, but today she's not buying. "If I bought my stones in the market, they would be cheaper," she explains, "but I would have to take an entire lot, including ones I can't use. At Gem Palace, I pay more to have a selection."
At J.N. Jewellers, an argument across the counter appears to be verging on a fistfight. Two men punch calculators furiously. A third appears to wrestle with the seller. Dangayach laughs and interprets: "He's saying 15 rupees a carat, the other one says 2, and the broker says, 'Yes, you take it for the pleasure.'" Finally, the deal is done at 5.25 rupees per carat. "I've seen a broker literally pick up Munnu and carry him across the room to close the transaction," says De Taillac.
The Mumbai Diamond Exchange, the somewhat glorified name for three office towers that have seen better days, is much more orderly than anything in Jaipur. On the ninth floor of the Panchratna tower, dealer Sunil Sethi of SK Exports flicks princess-cut and round-cut diamonds with tweezers without looking up. Every day he sees samples from about 35 brokers, who carry the stones in flat plastic boxes tucked into special cotton undervests.