Mehndi

Vaibhavi
Sep 1, 2020
7 min read

Updated: Sep 18, 2020

Last week, I stepped out of my house after 5 months. I had been visiting my grandmother but that does not count because she lives in the next building. We went to Matunga, which is 3.1 kms away from home, the furthest I have gone during this lockdown. While shopping, we stopped at a fashion store to buy hairbands. That is when I spotted a mehndi cone which was kept on display and immediately bought that too!

Mehndi is nothing but a henna tattoo, a temporary one. Essentially, mehndi is a thick olive green paste that is made using dried henna leaves and transferred into cones to create intricate, beautiful designs. Generally, in North India, brides decorate their arms and feet using mehndi. Nowadays a special mehndi ceremony is conducted before marriage where many women are invited. I remember attending a mehndi ceremony when I was about twelve years old.

Nanu bua’s (father’s cousin sister) marriage had gotten fixed and our entire joint family had gone to Delhi to attend it. I don’t have many memories from the trip because my brain does not retain information for too long. Still, I have a stark memory of a few parts of the wedding, perhaps, because they were the most exciting for me. I remember Tanu bua giving me her beautiful ivory white lehenga which she had bought when she was young. It’s so exhilarating to dress up a young girl and see her get excited as she gets compliments by many around her. Both my buas were really happy to dress me up in the lehenga, make me wear matching jewelry, do my makeup and photograph me. Everyone came to the room and looked at me in awe. I am sure that made me blush. I also clearly recall the mehndi ceremony. A huge hall was booked for it, mehndi artists were called and a music playlist played in the background, just like you must’ve seen in the movies. Slowly, we were surrounded by a beautiful aroma of mehndi and happy women rejoicing at the sight of their decorated hands. Of course Nanu bua’s mehndi took the longest as she had to fill both her arms until the elbows and her feet too! There’s a cute tradition of hiding the spouse’s initials in the intricate mehndi design for him to find it later on. One of the artists applied mehndi on my hands too. After it dried up, I remember someone applying a mixture of sugar and lemon on the mehndi so that it becomes darker by morning. Darker the colour, the prettier it looks.

My Chachi (aunt) loves adoring her hands with mehndi too and every time she called an artist home, she would never forget to call me. We were not allowed to wear mehndi to school and at such times, she would convince me to apply a smaller mehndi design on the inner hand.

All my dad’s relatives stay in Delhi. When I was young, we would either go to Ujjain or Delhi during my school vacations. Once, we went to Delhi and from there planned a trip to Amritsar with our relatives. We had come back to our hotel room from our visit to the famous Golden Temple. Roaming around in the scorching heat had drained our energies, thus, we all laid in the bed beside each other to rejuvenate ourselves for the remaining day ahead of us. I had shut my eyes and everyone for some reason thought I was fast asleep. I decided to play along only to realise that I had made a big mistake.

Disclaimer: I am going to write a horror story, so if you are fainthearted, please skip to ‘What attracts me to mehndi?’ for I don’t want to be the reason for your sleepless nights.

Tanu bua narrated the story.

A young couple had gotten married and the bride was taken to her new home. She went to the washroom to change her clothes and freshen up. A long time passed but the bride did not come out of the washroom. The spouse and his family got a little worried and tried knocking on the door. There was no answer. They looked at each other with a concerned expression on their faces. This time, they knocked louder. It was a moonless, silent night with only the sounds of crickets chirping coming from afar. They called out her name and knocked continuously to no avail. After repeated failed attempts, they decided to break the door open. Somehow, the men in the house broke it open and what they saw inside rendered them stunned. She was gone. There was absolutely no sight of her inside the washroom. It was bizarre and uncanny and everyone just stood with their mouths wide open. How could someone possibly escape from a washroom that is locked from inside and has only a small window with metal grills covering it! The spouse frantic with worry, tried calling her phone but it was at home. He was going mad, he rushed down the building just to check around and find her even though her presence somewhere outside the home seemed impossible. After a while, he spotted a woman wearing a lehenga hysterically running down the road. He recognized her as his wife.

I do not remember the story after that, but I do remember the reason why she was found running on the road at night.

Apparently, when she went to the washroom, a spirit living on the Peepal tree outside their building entered her body because it was attracted to the smell of henna.

When I heard this, I was scarred. I honestly wished I was asleep. After that, I was extremely scared to take a bath in the hotel bathroom. Every time I was alone, I would be reminded of this story, escalating my heart rate but I never told anyone about what I was going through.

It had such a huge impact on me that I started detesting mehndi. After this incident, everytime my Chachi called me for a mehndi session, I would excuse myself. Why? Because there was a Peepal tree right outside our building. This phase went on for a really long time until I finally grew up and became more rational. Thankfully, now, I am not scared of applying mehndi, whether there is a Peepal tree nearby or not.

What attracts me to mehndi?

I think primarily, my love for drawing inspired my interest in mehndi making. I think I have received all my creative genes from my Nani (maternal grandmother) and Masi (mother’s sister). They both engaged in a variety of art forms and to hone my talent, my Nani had enrolled me into summer art classes that were happening in Ujjain once. There were many different classes like candle making, mehndi making, drawing, soft toys making, etc. I joined the mehndi making and even the drawing class I think. We were taught to draw mehndi on paper first and then on hand using the cone. We would trace our hand on paper and then draw our designs in it. Now, I wish I could show you my drawings but the book is lost somewhere in my house. I searched everywhere and troubled my mom and brother enough only to realize my efforts are redundant. Anyway, I hope I find that book someday and when I do, I will definitely insert pictures here. However, while searching for my book, I found a mehndi drawing made by my Masi.

Ballpoint pen on tracing paper

Mehndi designs

Indian mehndi uses various motifs inspired from nature like leaves, flowers, paisleys, peacocks and even human figures. Other basic elements such as lines, dots, curves, spirals and circles are used to fill up the larger motifs. These designs are repeated to create beautiful patterns. Usually, Indian mehndi leaves no empty spaces and completely fills up the entire hand.

Vini and mehndi

Vini is obsessed with mehndi. She has mehndi on her hands at most times irrespective of celebrations and festivals. When I planned this post last week, I thought Vini’s story should definitely be included and therefore, I asked her for a write up. Here’s what she wrote.

What my hobby teaches me about my goals

As a young little girl, the idea of having designs imprinted on my hand was fascinating. I would wait for festivals to arrive so that my mother could take me to a mehndi artist to get intricate designs drawn on my hand. She knew how to apply mehndi too but she could only make simple designs. As years went by, I started applying mehndi on my own. Initially I could only draw bad, crappy and crooked lines. My idea behind the mehndi designs was not perfection but it was just to have a cool design on my hand during celebrations.Years and years of practice, consistency and the desire to apply it again and again subconsciously trained me into perfecting the art, with no gains. It was purely my love for mehndi art. I would copy design from online images, magazines, books and apply them to fit in my lanky hands. Subconsciously, I was learning the art before plunging into making something of my own.

In the past few days, I had been feeling really low about not being able to achieve my goals. As a result, I decided to take my mind off of it and put a detailed mehndi design. An hour into it and it slowly struck me why I was feeling low. The answer was ‘persistence’. In the age of social media, quick results, instant turnover and fast paced life, this instant gratification is all what makes us feel ‘happy’ and ‘successful. The release of dopamine upon hearing praises about us only lasts for minutes until we want more, but fail to get it. It was exactly what I was lacking – the ability to be consistent in achieving something. My younger self had one goal, one vision with no expectations or demands. Sure, the praises were there but that just added to the push to do more than be the driving force to it. Probably, my adult self forgot the purity of passion in this rat race of the world wanting to become jack of all trades. Instead, we became masters of confusion. It’s great to receive appreciation but it is better to be able to appreciate the efforts in developing a craft than the end product. Maybe, my adult self needs to ponder on this thought to grow more and better.

I loved how Vini learnt philosophy by practicing the art of mehndi making.

She’s a sweetheart and suggested we do a Sunday mehndi design session when she heard I was upset due to not being able to find my mehndi art book.

Here is what we made. I usually don’t apply mehndi, but it was not too bad and I managed to apply something decent on my foot and my hand.

Below is my left hand and my left foot decorated with mehndi art.