India has long held the record as the world's largest consumer of gold. But now China is catching up. For me and many Indians, China is a constant reminder of what we are not, and what we could be if we tried hard enough. We compare ourselves to China constantly: computer programmer cousins of mine come home to laud the skyscrapers of Shanghai and the ring roads of Beijing. But I for one will be quite happy to see the day India falls behind in the gold race.

India's huge appetite for gold has its origins in deep-rooted customs. The birth of a new baby prompts the new mother's parents to buy, as is their duty, gold for the grandchild – which for most Indians means a small chain, anklets and even a gold loin chain. When a young girl comes of age, it falls to uncles to come visiting laden with jewels and gifts.

Then the girl gets married. This is where the fun begins. This time it is not just the maternal uncles and grandparents who cough up. The mother of the bride is stripped of her ornaments, which are converted to new gold. Assuming her daughter conceives, a ceremony takes place in the seventh month of her pregnancy, when she receives further jewels and anything left over from the promised dowry.

As a young trainee doctor, I used to look after women in the burns ward. It is an unpleasant task for anyone, but to the sole female trainee goes the job of delivering all the premature babies whose mother's body has been badly burned, and thus rejects the added burden of another life.

In the burns unit, the women always outnumbered men with ease; and never once in my difficult time there have I seen a mother-in-law on whom the kerosene stove had "accidentally" fallen. Night after night I lay shivering and waiting for the call. It was always either young men who had burned themselves in an attempt to take their own lives, or it was the daughter-in-law. Many times she was seven to eight months pregnant – the time when her family are expected to arrive laden with gifts.

One can do nothing but wonder at the timing of the stoves and kerosene lamps. By the time I finished my placement there, I stopped even speculating about such things; I was on to more practical issues – doing a preferential mapping of the burns area: please God, let there be no burns on the abdomen; it will be difficult to listen to the baby.

The scenario among the middle classes in India is quite different. Shortly before a cousin's wedding recently, I helped my aunt sort out the bride's jewels. The necklaces, bangles and earrings had to be worn for different ceremonies and the same jewel could not be worn twice. I told her that I had heard that even the Queen of England wore the same jewellery more than once. I was asked to leave my English ideas back in England. And I assure you that mine is just an upper middle class family.

As I took a breath of fresh air that night, I watched a pig wallowing in the gutter of the sewage channel that runs along the front of the house. Shouldn't one deal with open sewage before hoarding diamonds and gold? But what do I know? I sounded my uncle out. He asked what would happen if "luxuries" like clearing the sewage and the pig stood in the way of my cousin getting a well settled life. What if they meant we couldn't afford the extra 20g of gold as a dowry for the boy with a good job in America?

In India, gold is not just a litmus test of one's status. For many, it defines every rite of passage – leaving cherished memories for the haves, scarred minds and bodies for the have-nots. My mother jokingly asks me to marry and have children soon. If they are girls, then it will be up to her to save their dowry for them: they will have a careless, absentminded workaholic for a mother. I, for one, will be proud to have daughters who will not wear gold during their weddings. And I hope there will be a day when every Indian mother-in-law will be happy to have a no-gold marriage. Until then, go, China, go.