Henna!!

I woke up today morning with the smell of henna emanating from my palms and it roused in me a warm sense of sensuality. This smell brings back so many memories- Ma's beautiful hand, full of intricate patterns, almost weighing it down. Yes, always just the left hand, never both, 'one has to be practical', karvachauth or come what, you wouldn’t let anything tie you down. Late night 'sangeet' and 'mehandi', tinkling of bangles and anklets, women playing on the dholki and singing some seriously raunchy songs. I was always the one who would never dance, with this complete teeny expression on my face, like how i was so above all this. Hardly ever got mehandi put then, it was silly and I pretended to hate the smell. But ohh, how I loved it!! There is something so warm about it, so soft. Something extremely erotic, maybe because of the snatches I remember from hindi songs, like ‘116 chaand ki raatien, aur tumhaare kaandhe kaatil,gheeli mehandi ki khushboo…” – or like that song from Dil Se, “jiya jale”.

So many spiels surrounding the intensity of the colour, but what I like to believe is that the more passionate a person is, the richer the mehandi, as the heat of ones blood makes the colour bloom. Well, my hands are rust almost,(oh well. I always like to think of myself as this passionate sex goddess anyway!!). But I had no occasion to get my hands thus, except that Chino and I were at the Surajkund Mela yesterday. There was this group in a corner stall selling henna powder and Chino was busy clicking their pictures. They were from Rajasthan and their attire, or faces, I don’t know which he found so interesting that was clicking away to glory. With nothing better to do I started chatting up this little girl, also so that she wouldn’t look straight in the camera and he would get her ‘natural’ look.

Then the smell started working it’s magic on me and I just couldn’t resist getting some put on my palms. Well, I have never been a huge fan of intricate designing with peacocks n what not, so I just asked her to make a circle in the middle of my palms and fill the tips of my fingers. Ofcourse this was something most unusual and quite amusing, so her kid brother also wanted in on it. I was reduced to this guinea pig that the two were testing their skills on, and in the eagerness to out do each other made a complete mess. I could feel the eyes of passerbys gazing at my hands with mirth, and some actually passed some silly comments, but I was least bothered, coz it was so much fun. Sunny afternoon, C with his camera(taking my pics now), two highly amused kids and this Rajasthani woman singing folk songs, I couldn’t have asked for more. Exactly why suraj kund mela was so much fun this year, coz usually its this crazy shopping frenzy with ma, but this time all I bought was a li’l papier-mâché bird to hang in my room and a book mark. All we did was watch folk performers and when C gave them the photographs he had taken last time their faces lit up, and they all surrounded us and wanted him to take more pictures. They performed again and again for the sole purpose of being photographed. Then they clambered around C for the pics and when I smiled they all blushed and looked away shyly. Such simple people who were happy just to see their pictures, and C was so happy to just to see them smile (and yeah I am sure the adulation didn’t hurt too much either!!).