Seedhi baat pehle: chandi kaali padti hai. Har chandi. Humari bhi. Jo brand kahe uski chandi kabhi kaali nahi padegi — wo jhooth bol raha hai. Yahan poora sach hai, aur 2-minute ka ilaaj bhi.
Chandi kaali kyun padti hai?
Hawa mein sulphur hota hai — pollution, paseena, perfume, yahan tak ki kuch khaane ki cheezon se bhi. Silver sulphur se milkar silver sulphide banata hai — wahi kaali-bhoori parat jo aapko dikhti hai. Ise tarnish kehte hain.
Ye 925 sterling silver ke asli hone ka saboot bhi hai — steel aur nakli plating aise react nahi karti. Tarnish defect nahi hai. Chemistry hai.
Kitni jaldi hota hai?
Rhodium-finish pieces (RUAAB ke zyadatar) — mahino tak nahi hota, kyunki rhodium ki parat silver ko hawa se bachati hai
Plain 925 — kuch hafton se mahino mein halka sa
Oxidised/antique pieces — inka dark finish jaan-boojh kar banaya jaata hai; wo tarnish nahi, design hai
Paseena, perfume, hair spray, swimming pool ka chlorine — ye sab process tez karte hain.
2-minute mein wapas chamak
Polish cloth se ragdo — har RUAAB box mein cloth aati hai. Halke haath se, ek hi disha mein. 90% kaam yahin ho jaata hai.
Zyada tarnish ho toh — gunguna paani + 2 boond mild soap, soft brush se, phir turant sukha lo.
Kabhi mat karo: toothpaste, baking soda ragadna, ya koi bhi harsh chemical — ye finish kha jaate hain. Oxidised pieces ko toh cloth se bhi zor se mat ragdo, unka dark finish design hai.
Kaala padne se bachana ho toh
Perfume/spray pehle, jewellery baad mein
Nahaate, swimming aur workout ke waqt utaar do
Box ya airtight pouch mein rakho — hawa se door, tarnish slow
Pehnne ke baad ek baar cloth se pochh lo
Toh defect kya hota hai?
Kaala padna defect nahi. Ye defect hain: stone girna, plating ka utarna/peel hona, joint ya clasp tootna. Inke liye RUAAB ki 30-din paise-wapas guarantee hai — wallet credit nahi, paise. Aur 1 saal tak free repair/replace.
Aur tarnish ke liye? Box ki cloth se 2 minute. Ya Bikaner store (Teliwara Chowk) aa jao — free polish, kabhi bhi, bill nahi poochhenge.
Men's silver in India stopped being a statement some years ago and became ordinary. A kada at a desk. A chain under a collar. A Rudraksh worn every day instead of only on festival mornings. What follows is the practical part: what to choose for your build, how to size a kada properly, and how to wear the pieces without looking like you are wearing them.
Kada, bracelet or chain
These three are not interchangeable, and wrist size decides more than taste does.
A kada is rigid. It does not follow the wrist; the wrist sits inside it. On a broad wrist with a heavy forearm, a kada reads as proportionate. On a narrow wrist, under about 16 cm around, a wide heavy kada tends to look borrowed, and it slides. If your wrist is on the finer side and you still want one, go narrower in width rather than smaller in size.
A bracelet is flexible and clasped. It follows the wrist, so it suits almost every build, and it sits under a shirt cuff without catching. This is the safer first purchase.
A chain avoids the wrist question altogether. Length is what matters. Twenty inches sits at the collarbone and disappears under a buttoned shirt. Twenty-two to twenty-four inches sits on the chest and is meant to be seen. Eighteen inches is a close fit that reads more European than Indian.
Seeing widths side by side settles this faster than measuring does, so it is worth looking through the full men's jewellery range before deciding.
Sizing a kada: the 2.x system
Kadas are not sized small, medium, large and extra large. Indian bangle sizing uses a numbered system that describes actual inner diameter, and it is worth learning because it is precise.
Sizes run 2.2, 2.4, 2.6, 2.8, 2.10 and 2.12. Note that 2.10 comes after 2.8. It is read as "two-ten", not as a decimal. Each step up adds roughly one centimetre of inner circumference.
Bangle size
Inner diameter
Inner circumference
2.2
5.4 cm
17.0 cm
2.4
5.7 cm
17.9 cm
2.6
6.0 cm
18.9 cm
2.8
6.4 cm
19.9 cm
2.10
6.7 cm
20.9 cm
2.12
7.0 cm
21.9 cm
How to measure at home
Press your four fingers together and tuck your thumb in toward your palm, as if you were sliding a rigid bangle on.
Wrap a strip of paper or a length of non-stretch thread around the widest part of the hand in that position, usually across the knuckles at the base of the thumb.
Mark where it overlaps, lay it flat against a ruler, and read the length in centimetres. That is your hand circumference.
Choose the size whose inner circumference is equal to or just above your measurement. If you fall between two, go up.
Two practical notes. Measure the hand you will actually wear it on, since the dominant hand is usually slightly larger. And an open-ended kada has a little give at the gap, so it forgives a near miss, where a closed one does not. The full chart is on the size guide, and sizes are listed piece by piece in the kada collection.
Weight and presence
Two kadas can look identical in a photograph and feel like completely different objects on the wrist.
A solid kada carries its weight low and still. It settles against the wrist bone and stays there, and you stop noticing it after a day. A hollow or thin-walled kada of the same outer dimensions weighs a fraction as much. It rides up the forearm, swings when you move, and rings slightly when it meets a table. It also dents. A solid piece takes a knock and keeps its shape.
Weight is the most reliable indicator of what you are actually buying. When two pieces look the same and are priced differently, the gram weight usually explains the gap.
Oxidised or polished
An oxidised, or antique, finish is deliberate darkening pushed into the recesses of a design, so the pattern reads as depth rather than shine. A polished finish is bright and reflective and reads as new.
Oxidised works with warm and deeper skin tones, with kurtas, linen, denim and anything textured, and with carved or detailed designs where the darkening is doing structural work. It is quieter across a room.
Polished works with cooler and fairer skin tones, with tailoring, formal shirting and sharp minimal shapes. It reads dressier and photographs brighter.
If you are choosing one piece to wear with everything, oxidised is more forgiving. If you are building around a suit, polished.
Layering chains without clutter
Layering fails when everything competes. Three rules cover most of it.
Differ the lengths by at least two inches. Chains at similar lengths tangle and read as one messy line.
Let one piece lead. A pendant on the shorter chain and a plain chain longer, or the reverse, but only one of them should be the thing people notice.
Vary the link, not the metal. A box chain next to a curb chain reads as intentional. Two near-identical curbs read as an accident. Keep the metal and the finish consistent.
Two chains is a sensible ceiling for most men. Three works only if one of them is genuinely thin.
Spiritual pieces, worn daily
Om, trishul, Rudraksh, Khatu Shyam. These are the pieces most often bought for a festival and then kept in a box, which wastes a good object and misses the point of it.
A spiritual pendant is designed to be worn against the skin every day. That is what the form is for. Worn daily it also ages properly: sterling picks up a soft patina in the recesses, the high points stay bright, and the piece starts to look like it belongs to you rather than to a shop.
For daily wear, keep the pendant modest in size and let the chain do the work. A large pendant on a thin chain looks unbalanced and pulls at the neck. The spiritual collection is built around pieces at daily-wear scale.
Wedding versus work
For a wedding, this is the one occasion where scale is correct. A solid kada with an oxidised finish, a visible chain at twenty-two inches, a ring with presence. Ethnic clothing carries weight that tailoring cannot, and an understated piece disappears entirely against a sherwani.
For work, one piece, at or just under the cuff. A narrow kada or a flat bracelet. If you wear a chain, keep it at collarbone length and let it stay under the shirt. Rings are the exception; a single band is fine in almost any office.
The test is simple. At a wedding, the jewellery should be seen. At work, it should only be noticed by someone standing close enough to notice.
Keeping it right
Sterling is rhodium-finished to resist tarnish, but no finish is permanent. Contact points wear over time, and sweat, perfume and humidity speed things along. Wipe a piece with a soft cloth after a long day, put it on after the aftershave rather than before, and store it dry and sealed rather than open on a shelf. Tarnish, when it comes, is a surface film and it comes off. Details are on the care page.
Sterling silver is one of the most misunderstood materials in Indian jewellery. A great deal of what is sold as silver contains no silver at all, and the stamp inside a band means different things depending on who put it there. This is a plain account of what 925 is, how to tell it apart from the things it gets confused with, and what to expect from it over years of wear.
What 925 actually means
925 is a purity figure. It means the metal is 92.5 per cent silver by weight, with the remaining 7.5 per cent made up of other metals, most often copper.
The obvious question is why anyone would add anything at all. The answer is that pure silver, at 99.9 per cent, is too soft to build jewellery from. A pure silver ring goes out of round in a trouser pocket. A pure silver kada flattens under the weight of an ordinary day. Prongs holding a stone would open on their own.
The 7.5 per cent alloy fixes that. It gives sterling enough hardness to hold a shape, enough spring to take a knock, and enough structure to keep a polish and grip a setting. 925 is the international benchmark for sterling, used in Italy, Thailand, the United States and India alike, which is why it appears on jewellery from all of them.
Sterling, plated, German silver and "silver-toned"
Four very different things share a shelf in most Indian markets.
925 sterling silver is silver throughout. Cut it in half and the inside looks like the outside. It can be resized, repaired, re-polished and re-finished, because there is real metal to work with.
Silver-plated is a base metal, usually brass, with a very thin layer of silver deposited on top. The layer wears through at the points that rub: the underside of a ring, the edge of a kada, the back of a pendant. Once it is through, the brass shows.
German silver, also sold as nickel silver or alpaca, contains no silver at all. It is copper, nickel and zinc. It is a legitimate material, but the name misleads, and its nickel content is the single most common cause of skin reactions.
"Silver-toned" or "silver finish" fashion jewellery is a colour description, not a material one. It tells you what the piece looks like and nothing about what it is made of.
How to tell them apart before you buy
Weight. Sterling is dense. Pick up a plated piece and a sterling piece of the same size and the difference is immediate. Brass and light alloys feel hollow for their volume.
The stamp. Look for 925 stamped into the metal, usually inside a band or on the tag of a chain. No stamp anywhere is a red flag.
Price. Silver has a daily market rate. A "sterling" chain priced far below the metal value of its own weight is not sterling.
Wear points. On a used plated piece, look at the underside of the shank or the edges. Yellow or pink metal showing through settles the question.
Magnets. Sterling is not magnetic. A piece that jumps to a fridge magnet has a steel or iron core.
A 925 stamp is not a BIS hallmark
This is where most Indian buyers are misled, often by sellers who are confused themselves.
A 925 stamp is a maker's mark of purity. The house that produced the piece stamps it to declare the metal is sterling. It is a statement of the standard the piece was made to, backed by the maker's own name.
A BIS hallmark is something else entirely. It is issued under the Bureau of Indian Standards scheme, applied at a licensed assaying and hallmarking centre, and it carries the BIS mark along with the centre's identification. It is a third-party certification, not a maker's declaration.
The two are not interchangeable and the words should not be used as synonyms. When a listing says "925 hallmarked" or "925 certified", it is worth asking what is actually meant. In most cases it means a house stamp, described loosely. Ruaab pieces carry a 925 house stamp, and we describe them that way because that is what they are.
Why sterling suits sensitive skin
Most jewellery reactions in India are not silver allergies. They are nickel reactions. Nickel is the most common contact allergen there is, and it turns up in German silver, in cheap plating, and in low-grade alloys sold loosely as silver.
Sterling's alloy is copper, not nickel. For the large majority of people, including those who cannot wear costume jewellery for more than an hour, sterling is comfortable for all-day wear. The exception is worth naming honestly: a small number of people react to copper, and a very small number react to silver itself. If your skin has objected to every metal you have tried, sterling is a strong bet but not a guarantee.
Tarnish: what causes it, and why it is not damage
Tarnish is a chemical reaction, not decay. Silver reacts with sulphur compounds in the air to form silver sulphide, a dark film on the surface. The metal underneath is untouched.
What speeds it up:
Sulphur in the air, from traffic and industry, and closer to home from rubber bands, wool and some cardboard and paper.
Sweat, which is mildly acidic and carries salts.
Perfume, deodorant, hairspray and lotion sprayed onto or over a piece.
Humidity. Coastal and monsoon air tarnishes silver faster than dry inland air, which is why silver behaves differently in Mumbai than it does in Bikaner.
Chlorinated water in swimming pools.
The useful part is that tarnish is reversible. A soft polishing cloth takes early tarnish off in a minute. Heavier tarnish needs a proper silver clean. Nothing is lost, because nothing was consumed. Full instructions are on our care page.
Worth knowing: silver worn regularly tarnishes less than silver left in a drawer. Skin contact and gentle friction keep the surface bright. Storing a piece sealed, with the air excluded, does the same.
What a rhodium finish does
Rhodium is a platinum-group metal. Applied as a thin layer over sterling, it does three things: it adds a hard surface that resists scratching, it gives a brighter white than silver's natural warm grey, and it puts a barrier between the silver and the air, which slows tarnish considerably.
Now the honest part. Rhodium is a finish, and every finish wears. How long it lasts depends on where the piece sits and how you live. A pendant that hangs clear of everything can hold its finish for years. A ring on a working hand, or the underside of a kada that meets a desk edge and a steering wheel every day, will thin at the contact points sooner. That is normal, it is not a fault, and it is why rhodium-finished pieces can be re-finished rather than replaced.
Anyone who tells you a silver piece is permanently anti-tarnish is overstating it. What is true is that a rhodium finish resists tarnish, and that the resistance is a layer that gets used up.
How we work
Ruaab is a 925 sterling silver house in Bikaner, Rajasthan, run by Shiv Shakti Jewellers. Every piece is sterling throughout, stamped 925, and finished to be worn rather than stored. Weight, worn with intent.
If you are starting out, rings and pendants are the easiest entry, and the FAQ covers sizing, shipping and exchange. Shipping is free across India, dispatch takes 24 to 48 hours and delivery 3 to 7 working days. Exchanges run for 15 days; damaged, defective or wrong items are replaced free.
925 stamped · Authenticity certificate with every order