Culture, in India, does not ask permission — it simply envelops you. For the founder of Eenkai, a jewellery atelier launched in 2025, that truth is both personal and foundational. A life spent moving through more than seven towns and cities across the country leaves its marks not in rootlessness but in accumulation — of languages, landscapes and the quiet, persistent anchors that travel with a person regardless of where they land.
“Until the age of four, I was living in a beautiful town called Ambasamudram, in Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district, nestled in the Western Ghats foothills by the Tamirabarani River. The scent of jasmine buds drifting from my childhood backyard, vast banana fields, the Wester n Ghats in the distance with Lion Tailed Macaques and Nilgiri Tahrs wandering freely — left a deep imprint on me. These memories became my anchor,” begins Poornima Parvathy.
It is from that accumulation that the label takes shape. The atelier explores Indian hand-crafted jewellery techniques, treating each piece as a translation of lived memory into form, colour and stone. “Every person born and brought up in different parts of India carries their own memories, their own anchors. That, I believe, is the beauty of growing up in India. Culture has a way of enveloping you. I felt the need to translate these into objects people can wear. Our brand name comes from the Sangam Tamil poem Kurinjipattu, which is over 2,000 years old and there are 99 flowers mentioned in it. One of the flowers it describes shares that same deep reddish-purple shade as the garnets we picked for our pieces, that is, Eenkai,” the designer tells us.
Poornima started a furniture design studio in 2019 and her jewellery design philosophy overlaps with that practice. Due to the pandemic and other challenges on the way, she had to hit pause, but eventually the road led her to make wearable art. “I started to translate my philosophies, travels and my memories into pieces made by the people of India, across different craft clusters. Each piece is created in small batches, with care and clarity, honouring the process as much as the product,” she reveals.
Cast in 22kt gold and silver-plated brass and 925 sterling silver with micron gold plating, the brand offers more than 40 designs across four edits as a part of Volume 1, their latest launch. The Banana Plant Edit draws on one of the subcontinent’s most quietly omnipresent plants — present on dining leaves, at temple thresholds, woven through ritual and daily life in equal measure. Banana flower motifs sit alongside plants in embossed coins, the surfaces finished with striped meenakari enamel work and studded with natural garnets.
The Western Ghats Edit captures those ancient ranges in motifs like betel leaves, the moon and the sun, red chillies, oranges with leaf and the Lion Tailed Macaque, Tamil letters and a hasli, inspired by ancient copper coins and detailed with a flower motif — are set with cabochon rhodolites and red onyx.
Similarly, the Gajra Edit offers statement four-inch dangling jewellery inspired by the woven strings of jasmine that once bloomed in the backyard, tied fresh and fragrant into garlands.
“The Everyday Edit is not yet live online, but I do bring it along with me to different cities for pop-ups. Volume 1 is made by the artisans in Jaipur, using a lost wax casting technique; some pieces are fully hand - made, involving techniques like hammering, twisting wires and wire-wrapped metal beading. I stumbled upon rhodolites, that particular reddish-purple that sits somewhere between grape and rose, mined in Odisha, com - pletely untreated. I knew almost immediately it was going to be part of what I was building,” she shares.
₹2,400 onwards. Available online.
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