Thrissur, on the coast of Kerala, is known as India’s ‘gold town’. It was here that Puthussery Alukka Joseph Varghese moved into jewellery retail from his umbrella business in the late 1950s. One of his ­fifteen children, Joy Alukkas, seemed to have inherited Joseph’s entrepreneurial spirit. In 1986, the quest for his personal El Dorado took Joy to the modern ‘city of gold’: Dubai.