> presumably predominantly decoration and wealth storage.

People without access to banks wear their wealth on them. That seems super risky but you see it every day on the street. I suppose they have no alternative.

I have seen in photos that when my parents married my mother was draped in gold, which she never wore again. As a kid I once was with her when she visited her safety deposit box and I picked up one of the bangles which immediately bent out of circularity. It wasn't designed to be worn, or at least to be worn once, very carefully.

Jewelry stores in the US don't seem to sell by weight. I remember jewelry stores always pulling out the scale and calculator to tell you the price -- it must have changed every day.

Heh fun to assume the 11% in both are the same; all industrial usage of gold is limited to Indian housewives.

They also adorn their children. I asked why families living on the street would spend so much to give a child a gold earring. “So if they get lost the person who finds them knows someone cares about them and wants them back”