Every honeymoon inevitably ends the exact same way. You walk into your own kitchen a few days after the trip and realize the room service is gone.

The illusion of infinite resources vanishes. The credit card bills arrive. Difficult daily choices replace holiday itineraries. The actual, demanding work of a marriage officially begins.

That exact transition crossed my mind while reading Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech last week.

Weddings alone cater to nearly half of the annual demand for gold in India. While average Indian weddings demand significant gold, wealthy households routinely see two to three kilos on display, with the ultra-rich buying several more. Every region has its own version of this ritual: the Bengali bride’s kasu mala, the Punjabi chooda stacked alongside gold bangles, and the South Indian temple jewelry that weighs down a bride’s neck with generations of accumulated intention. The bride, adorned with gold on her wedding, holds a subtle financial strength, an unspoken power. She commands assets of her own that remain separate from her husband. This tradition functioned as a transfer of security, passed from one generation to another through a metal that does not rust and does not lose value.

Last week, the prime minister stood in Hyderabad and asked us to stop buying it for a year.

I have been turning that request over in my head for days. The economics behind the request are sound and genuinely urgent, yet the true weight of his words lies in what they reveal about India’s current reality. A war between two countries we share no border with has walked, without knocking, into the most intimate corners of Indian life: the kitchen, the jewelry box, and........

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