Instant Mehandi

Nostalgic! I was picturizing my childhood memories regarding henna / mehandi while reading your childhood days. The only difference was my mom didn't like to apply mehandi at night and I grew up listening this beautiful song on gorintaku. Some lines in that song describe on what kind of husband we would get depend on henna color on our hands. My sister and I had compared color of the mehandi we get after removing henna from hands and also discussed with friends. Wow! Those days

True and I always miss that freshness, warmth in celebrating festivals too. May be that is the speciality of childhood which we can enjoy anything with a pure mind and innocence.

Nice idea, Lakshmi and all the best .

 

Very relatable, LS. Remembering those days when I and cousins would wait until late at night for my grandmother or mother to get free and do Mehandi for us all and the aunts alike. Nights before Diwali and Pongal would be so "kalakala" - with joy and laughter! Now it's a more of a simple affair at my mil's and putting Mehandi on my hands is my DH's job. Sweet and romantic that way I guess, new kind of memories to cherish for me. Lol.


Enjoyed reading, thank you for sharing!

 

Dear Lakshmi,

I am glad this temp mehandi brought some interesting memories to you and others in this thread. I always wondered how the green mehandi produces red color in the hands when I was young. Whenever my mother used mehandi, I used to sit and watch. As I didn't have any sisters, my mother used to ask me whether I would like to have mehandi. Out of curiosity, I said, "Yes" to her when I was young and walked around with red round center in my palm and red edge in all my fingers. After I grew up, when the boys started making fun of me, I told my mom to stop doing mehandi to me. But after I grew up, I used to watch mehandi events in festivals and marriages with keen interest and many used to ask me what I was doing among the women. Slowly, I stopped being around the mehandi events.

 

I love the fragrance of fresh henna! I could smell it as I was reading your snippet. So many lovely memories!

Henna plants can be grown indoors. And they are available cheap. Give it a go!

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I could feel each and every words of this post, as my childhood mehendi memory was very similar to this. It was a process, and in my case not just the house-helper, but everyone in the family would be involved in this process.

My cousins would bring the fresh leaves from the nearby villages, and our domestic helper would do the grinding part.
Mom, aunts and grand mom would give suggestions as to what to add to the paste, and when to apply considering our health and all.
They believed keeping mehendi in hands for long at night can cause phlegm in kids, so they made sure we follow the right protocols. Also, ideas from friends, and neighbors here and there to add backing soda, tea etc...etc... to bring out the nice maroon color to the mehendi.

My neighborhood young girls (older than us) would invent new techniques to apply mehendi using icing piping bags, and used toothpaste tubes.
Some go overboard and apply hot wax designs in their hands, and then apply this mehendi paste over it.
Their entire palm would become red except the areas which was covered in wax design. It was a painful process, but was trendy back then.

We lived in a Muslim neighborhood during our childhood, and it was customary to apply mehendi on the 27th day of their Ramadan fasting time. That day, the entire community would stay awake for prayers, but for young kids like us, to stay awake and dry our mehendi filled hands without having to go to bed was fun & easy.
That would turn out to be the most memorable night in our lives, by chit chatting with neighborhood kids, playing antackshari and eating cookies throughout night time.

I forgot to mention the results of our mehendi the next morning
Thankfully, a few of our hands would turn maroon in color and the mehendi will last for more days than others.
My sister and many of my cousins will either have dull red or orange only, that last fewer days only.

The older aunts and cousins would jokingly say, the ones with dark red/maroon hands will have loving/caring husbands down the line, while the others won't. This will result in funny arguments among young girls like us during then.

You brought back all the fun filled childhood memories - Thanks!