lines and dots

i always thought of indian tattoos as random (but so pretty) designs
made with aesthetic considerations, not emotional ones
certainly not as over-thought-through as western tattooing has become
today people would look at you funny if you said you wanted a tattoo just because it "looks pretty"
but tribal tattoo art is often made with just that one basic purpose, and what's wrong with that?

but yesterday yashoda, our vegetable seller, showed me a different aspect of tribal tattooing


this is yashoda's fore arm with one of her many, many tattoos. the top most pattern with the lines and dots is my favorite and i intended to get it someday
and yesterday i loved it more when she told me it was in fact not lines and dots
but stick figures of girls holding hands
representing her childhood spent playing with her girlfriends

indian tattoos, i realized, tell a story too
there on yashoda's body are symbols of her childhood, flowers representing her village--her home, and later her husband's name and a bindi showing her married life. the two stick figures below in this picture i believe are her two children.

i hope to get these tattoos someday, in this indian style with the greenish ink and thick, rough needles so looked down upon by western tattooing. yashoda apparently got these from a woman sitting outside a railway station once for three rupees each! of course, the likelihood of me allowing a three rupee needle in my arm is zero. hopefully someday one of our "professional" tattoo artists will take up the cause of reviving and mainstreaming indian tattoo art. i don't know why it hasn't happened already.

p.s. for some really beautiful pictures of tribal tattoos from kutch, do visit one of my favorite new flickr streams, "the meanest indian", and this set of tribal tattoos. the clothes, the tattoos, the silver... gorgeous!