NOSE DIVING INTO NOSTALGIA
Every Mookuthi creation is birthed from a childhood recollection before it transitions into an exquisitely delicate gilded nose ornament. MOSAIC listens to Sarath Selvanathan — the Designer and Founder — thread stories of his journey from Chettinad summers to an eclectic canvas no bigger than a fingertip
WORDS by ALISHA UVAIS
There is a moment, early in our conversation with Sarath Selvanathan, when you realize he is not referring to jewellery. He is reminiscing about a grand aunt who arrived at all weddings in his family draped in a perfectly pleated Kanjeevaram saree and hair coiffed in a bun so tightly that not a single oily strand dared to peek out.
His reflections harbour a particular reverence families in the southern part of India reserve for such women — characterised by skin yellowed with turmeric and a forehead marked with a big round of kungumam.
Featuring in that redolent memory is the traditional hair knot called kondai — a black star sapphire glistening under the wedding lights — that we figure is the inspiration behind a collection under his brand Mookuthi.
“I’m a mechanical engineer, not a trained designer,” Sarath breaks in, adding, “and the only creative references I have are from my childhood.”
Every collection, he insists, is an anecdote waiting to be shared. Name one, and he will describe the memory behind it in detail: the neighbouring village of Athangudi with its coloured tiles, summers split between Chettinad and Trichy with cousins and grandparents, and an almost ‘accidental’ education of a treasured heritage.
ACQUIRED FROM ATHANGUDI
Watching people from entirely different cultures marvel at Athangudi tiles he had grown up walking on changed something in him. “Despite not being part of the Athangudi culture, these people truly valued the craft behind the tiles. That made me understand their importance.”
Curiosity, he says, is contagious. He eventually was egged by this renewed fascination to craft a collection the world could wear on the most tender part of the face.
To channelise his inquisitiveness, Sarath spent enough time with the Athangudi artisans so that the knowledge permeated well into his being — he wanted this line from Mookuthi conceived as an idea that treats craft as an inheritance to be absorbed.
ROAD TO PERFECTION
When asked how a design actually materialises, Sarath tells us that there is no one method. Eight years in, he still hasn’t found a definitive process.
He describes himself as permanently caught between two habits: staring at noses, at cafés, at salons, at bars, cataloguing their shapes and what they could hold, and simultaneously wrestling with a canvas that measures exactly one centimeter square.
“Think about an artist who’s constantly reimagining what he can put on his canvas. The only difference is his is maybe four foot by three foot and mine, just a square centimeter.”
Somewhere between the noses and the raw material sitting in front of him, a thought, related to his childhood, comes to mind that marries the two.
Once the image has taken shape, Sarath works with detailing specialists and artisans to carry it through prototyping and production, and then comes the part he considers just as important as the idea itself: putting the piece on an actual muse and watching how it feels.
“Is a headache induced while she’s wearing it? Does it poke?” he questions.
What looks resolved on paper still has to earn its place on a face, and each collection, he explains, tends to loop back through these stages four or five times before the ergonomics feel right.
ARMED WITH AUTHENTICITY
With his nose not pierced, he often is asked how easy was it to mount a company that is quintessentially about a woman’s piece of jewellery.
Though he built the brand as a college project in 2017, without personally experiencing the thing he was designing for, he invested in it all the perspectives he heard from people who wore the mookuthi. Treating each conversation, whether laced with laughter or arriving with tears, as inspiration, every bit of it was as valuable as gold or a black
star sapphire.
He is equally resolute about what he doesn’t want the brand to be. Mookuthi does not make clip-ons, a decision that instantly rules out anyone unwilling to commit to an actual piercing.
“If you really believe in this ornament as a form of self-expression, or self-indulgence, pierce your nose,” he asserts. This says something about how seriously the brand takes the idea that adornment should mean something beyond its aesthetics.
THE SOUTH STORY
Beyond the tiles, the gems, and years of trial and error sits a desire to make the southern part of India feel less distant.
Sarath speaks candidly about the disorientation of moving to the north as a young adult and realizing that people did not really know his home well. He talks about how intimidating an unfamiliar banana leaf meal can feel to someone who doesn’t know where to begin from or end, and how that has kept a rich, layered culture locked away.
Mookuthi, in his telling, is the way of opening that door: an invitation to find a personal thread inside stories that were waiting to be narrated.
What Sarath offers is a belief system, built slowly out of memory and an engineer’s patience with getting the smallest details right. Six hundred completed designs, Sarath mentions almost nonchalantly, never made it out to the world for sale.
“Some of them are personal favourites I am not ready to part with — some I want to frame rather than sell,” he muses, thus proving that for a brand built on one centimeter of space, there is still an entire universe left to explore.