Recollections of mineral collecting and dealing in India

With that in mind, I rushed back to Cambridge. Then Toby and I dashed off to India as soon as we could in early 1973. But I failed to bear in mind a cardinal precept, namely, India abhors haste. And I did not yet have enough wisdom or experience to foresee that I was setting myself up for the biggest financial and emotional disaster of my life. It never crossed my mind that India was about to get me, rather than Currier. But that part of the story has already been told (Kothavala, R. Z., 1982).

INTERCONTINENTAL MINERAL DEALING

By the mid-1970's, Rock Currier's mineral business, Jewel Tunnel Imports, and mine, Crystals of India, had become comfortably established. Each had evolved an individual form and structure that best utilized the strengths and aspirations of its owner.

Currier's business had turned largely wholesale, and had begun to extend its reach to disparate parts of the world beyond India. J.T.I. was dealing in huge quantities of minerals, rocks, polished stones, and novelties. It had become a fixed entity in Southern California, with warehouses, a payroll, and permanent staff who continued to smoothly operate the home office when Rock was off on his world-girdling travels.

Based in Berkeley, California, and then Oakland, mine was a one-man operation, although I was helped at mineral shows by Toby when his own work permitted, and by others. I was exceedingly fortunate to enjoy the incomparable assistance of Liz Van Horn (now, Taylor) at myriad shows, and also on a couple of exploratory expeditions to Afghanistan, Nepal, and India (see Kothavala, 1982). I carried a small stock of hand-picked mineral specimens, which I carried to a half-dozen shows each year, to museums, or to collectors' homes. I traveled light. Twice or thrice in most years I would spend a month or two at a time in India. Having been taught a brutal lesson once, I had now learned to deal with India at a respectful, sensible pace. No rushing. No dashing about desperately from one location to another. For me it became a dream come true: an intercontinental life blending India's chaotic eternal verities with America's dynamic and inspiring vision of the future.

During my Indian sojourns I would look in on my regular mineral-dealing colleagues in the vicinity of Bombay, Poona, and Nasik. I'd check out particular quarries and favored collecting spots around Maharashtra. Time and weather permitting, I would set aside a few days or a week to explore new localities as and when I picked up a whiff of something fresh or unusual. In that manner, I located and examined the source of ruby corundum crystals in a microcline gneiss matrix, from Budipadaga, in southem Karnataka, which I introduced to American mineral collectors at the California State Mineral Show in Pleasanton in 1976. Equally interesting to locate and explore were pyrolusite crystals pseudomorphic after manganite, from Sandur, Karnataka; small glassy green uvarovite crystals in schist, from near Maddur, Karnataka; and impressive euhedral crystals of zircon in pegmatitic diopside-syenite, virtually on the border between Tamil Nadu and southernmost Kerala, at the village of Puttetti, not far from Kovalam. None of these, other than the Budipadaga ruby corundum specimens, proved to be financially worthwhile materials for me to develop further, but at American mineral shows they added cachet to the name of my mineral business: Crystals of India.