IMAGINE OPENING A CUPBOARD in your home and discovering a fortune greater than the United States’ defence budget.
Is such instant and incalculable wealth only found in dreams or fairy tales? Perhaps so, or in India, where practically anything is possible.
G. Vidyaraj, an ageing and penniless farmer’s son, lives in a rented flat in Bangalore, southern India. Born some sixty years ago into an impoverished farming family, he moved to the city in his youth to begin a career – determined to seek fame and fortune.
Now an old man, still penniless, and suffering from a catalogue of ailments, he sips a cup of green tea and tells the extraordinary tale of how he became one of the richest men on Earth.
A cautionary tale par excellence, it’s a story in which an immense fortune has brought nothing but worries, obsessions, and envy from those all around.
‘My ancestors were direct descendents of the Vijayanagaran kings,’ Vidyaraj begins, in slow and precise English. ‘Our family was once in the ruling class, and through the Jagirdar lineage their history goes back more than seven hundred years. Heirlooms were passed down from one generation to the next. Seemingly worthless objects, but nonetheless each was worshipped by our family for centuries.’
A special room was set aside in the farmhouse where Vidyaraj grew up. The strange assortment of icons, idols, and other objects that filled it fascinated Vidyaraj as a boy.
‘My father used to worship those things in the puja room,’ he recalls, speaking at a secret location in central Bangalore. ‘Amongst the items there were four odd black lumps. On all auspicious occasions they would be taken down and worshipped with great reverence and devotion. Afterwards they would be hung up on the ceiling again.’
One generation after the next performed rituals in respect of the solid black lumps.
‘Nobody knew exactly what they were,’ continues Vidyaraj with a glint of excitement in his eye, ‘indeed, they didn’t even have any idea what they were made of. All that was known was that the lumps were very special. They were always protected and worshipped as religious and revered objects.’
The years passed.
Vidyaraj went off to Bangalore where he began his career as a legal advocate. He moved into a tiny apartment, where he still resides, above a post office in the centre of the city. He married, had four children and, after thirty-two years of practice, retired because of ill health. His life, like that of so many millions of Indians, was very ordinary. In no way had it prepared him for the astonishing events that were to come.
Vidyaraj had never been a religious man. He had after all left the village in search of an education and a professional career.
‘My horizons were opened when I was educated,’ he says, ‘I was the only one in my whole family who had a real education.’
When at last his parents and his siblings were dead, Vidyaraj inherited the room filled with icons, objects and four black lumps. He remembers how he was far too busy and impatient to perform the pujas, the rites of devotion, necessary to keep the gods at ease.
Instead he shut the heirlooms up in a cupboard and forgot about them.
‘My wife used to nag me for locking the relics away,’ says Vidyaraj recalling her scolding, ‘she has always been much more religious than me. To please her I agreed that we would take the artefacts and four lumps to the great temple of Nanjundeswara at Nanjangud, about a hundred miles from Bangalore. I wanted to donate the whole lot to the temple, as these were venerated religious objects.’
At the temple, Vidyaraj was met with a blizzard of forms and the bureaucracy.
‘Being an advocate,’ he says, ‘I knew how to make an application, and that getting through all the red tape was not worthwhile. I had no intention to get permission from the High Commissioner just to donate some old heirlooms.’
So Vidyaraj took his family back to Bangalore. On the way his wife pestered again, insisting that the objects should be given to the local temple, as it was certainly sacrilegious not to invoke them at all. But Vidyaraj’s mind had set to work and he had other plans.
‘As we made our way home,’ he continues, ‘it struck me that the black lumps were very heavy. Perhaps, I thought they were made of panchaloha, an alloy of five metals that usually contains gold. If one fifth was gold, and was extracted, I would be sure to make some money. My wife was horrified at this thought, fearing retribution from such sacrilege and blasphemy. She pressured me not to melt down the lumps or change their shape in any way.’
The idea of the gold ready to be removed so easily, nagged at Vidyaraj’s conscience. He tried to forget about it, but was unable to do so. Everything reminded him of the possible ore, the gold, the instant wealth. So one night Vidyaraj sent his wife and daughters off to the cinema and set to work.
‘I embarked on an investigation,’ he began softly, speaking in formal English moulded by decades of legal work. ‘There was a thick black crust of soot and grime covering the lumps. I took an old toothbrush and a bar of soap and began to wash. I assumed I was washing metal. The dirt was so hard that only some came away. After a lot of cleaning with the toothbrush, I held the lumps up to the light. In one I could see specks of red, and in another blue specks. It was then that I realized that these were not metal, but minerals, and they might be very valuable indeed.’
For months Vidyaraj kept his discovery secret. He immersed himself in the study of gemstones from books and articles borrowed from a public library. Worries that word of his fabulous fortune would leak out dogged him.
He could trust no one with the secret.
‘I thought,’ he went on, ‘if I took them to a jeweller that I might be hoodwinked and misguided. Such people might try to work for their own benefit. So I studied the geological sciences for a year or two.’
Through dedicated and gruelling studies, Vidyaraj learnt the elaborate experiments necessary to identify a precious stone. In the seclusion of his book-lined chamber he performed the vital tests. It was only then that he could pronounce with certainty the minerals’ true identities.
Three of the stones were rose-coloured double-star rubies, the fourth – a colossal sapphire.
How did four of the world’s biggest gems end up in Vidyaraj’s cupboard? The most plausible explanation is that they were passed down through generations, from his supposed ancestors – the Vijayanagaran kings. For safe keeping the gems must have been dyed black, then covered in soot and dirt.
Vidyaraj began to fear more than ever for his safety and that of his family. Constant anxiety, overwork, and his diabetic condition hampered his health. But still he could confide his great secret in no one. So having read a little bit about lapidary, he bought a small hand-driven grinding wheel. In a darkened room at his home, he set to work with the grinder to remove the top portions of the stones himself.
‘After some time each began to shine,’ he recalls. ‘Each exhibited star lines, and slowly they took on their individual shapes.’
For months Vidyaraj maintained his secrecy.
He would attend to his legal work by day, and study gemology by night. One by one he had the three rubies and the sapphire cut. Then he gave them names. And, over the few months and years, he announced their existence to the world. All the stones were cut in India. Vidyaraj himself admits deep regrets for rushing into having them cut. His knowledge, on how some of the biggest and most priceless gems in the world should be faceted, was very limited indeed.
The largest ruby in the world at the time, read Vidyaraj in the Guinness Book of Records, was the Rosser Reeves ruby of 138.72 carats, kept at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. The smallest of his own rubies, he named Indumathi after his wife. Weighing two hundred and fifteen carats, it immediately earned an entry in the Guinness Book of Records. Vidyaraj amazed the geological world by producing the Indumathi first.
But he had far better specimens still to come.
His second great ruby, named Vidyaraj, after himself, was the next to be shown to the world. It weighed six hundred and fifty carats, having been cut from the original stone of 1,125 carats. He still grieves at the probably unnecessary loss in great weight when cutting. In height the stone measures about three and a half centimetres and, in diameter, more than four centimetres.
As for the whereabouts of the stones, it’s anyone’s guess where they are. Vidyaraj is keeping his lips tightly sealed, for fear that he’ll be robbed. He says that the huge wealth in his possession has caused everyone he meets – even old friends – to view him with suspicion and greed.
But the biggest problem is not the way in which others covet his gems, but the fact that no one has the funds with which to purchase them. After all, the value of these gems is put at billions of dollars, a fact that seems to have escaped Vidyaraj himself.
‘I am asking anyone with deep pockets to come forward and to make themselves known to me,’ he says, sipping his tea. ‘There are surely plenty of millionaires or billionaires out there who have enough cash. I am certain of it. What about the Arabs for example?’ he asks. ‘We all know how rich they are. They ask if you want cash, cheque or credit card.’
When asked why he doesn’t simply cut the stones up and sell them off in bits, he screws up his face in alarm.
‘Oh my goodness,’ he says wearily. ‘No, no, I could never do that.’
‘But why not?’
‘Because I would lose the Guinness entry of course!’