It’s easy to get tattoos done in Goa.
I’m going to get my passwords tattoed
on my body. Facebook, bank account one, bank account two, gmail, yahoo, ATM,
the various sites that want passwords for heaven knows what security reason: one
site that dealt with cure for falling hair and balding insisted on public user
id and secret password!!. You can’t have one-password-fits-all, because
sometimes the site says the word is taken (can’t believe there are others who
want ‘piggywiggy’ as password).
Some fellow-Goans believe tattooing
is a new-fangled imported fad that’s ‘spoiling our youth’. Well-wishers of the
State tell me that casinos, drug-peddlars, pizzas, coffee-cafes, gym-dancing
classes, highways, bhailley, new
airports, cars with non-Goan number-plates, dengue-carrying mosquitoes, women
who go to discos, men who wear feminine-looking attire and tattoos are destroying our culture. Not true, at least the
tattoo part, the rest can be debated. Remember the blue ‘om’ signs and the
little crosses at the base of the thumbs? They’ve been around for at least
three generations. Same with the dots between the eyebrows of elderly women.
Tattoo art has been around in India for a very long time. In Goa, certainly,
for I’ve seen blue Hanumans and mis-shapen mango-like motifs on purple-brown
skins forty years ago when tattooing wasn’t a touristy thing to do. (These days
if one mentions skin-colour, one is considered propriety challenged. In my
youth, a gora-skin was white and a black-skin was just that. We were black. We
grew up calling a spade a shovel and nothing less. It was understood that
coastal people were ‘kallem’ and Kashmiris and foreigners were ‘gorem’ and no
one seemed to object when we cousins were compared to them. Fairness creams
were still many decades away. We giggled when we saw the few ‘goras’ around try
to roast themselves in the hot sun, then were admonished to behave ourselves
and get on with our tasks and homework.)
I mention the skin colour because I
was fascinated the first time I saw a multi-coloured tattoo on a gora skin.
Amongst the people I knew, no one bothered what tattoo you had or where as long
as you could claim there was resemblance to some kind of God or religious
emblem. And the colour was always indigo. This coloured tattoo was an abstract
design with red, yellow and green colours. Attractive, hypnotic.
Today, one doesn’t have to get
tortured with thick needles and the fear of contracting tetanus to get a
tattoo. Friend Anjalie, whose
beautifully shaped arm sports an intricate (permanent) Phoenix done by an
artist friend, says other than the discomfort of sitting still, there was
nothing to it. She adds, it was done over several sittings. Her’s is a
complicated tattoo. Today, young friends on holiday in Goa have ‘temporary
tattoo’ as must-do thing on their list. One can get temporary tattoos of
coconut palms sticking out of one’s buttocks and climbing over one’s spine or
snakes slithering down the shoulder onto the thorax and not worry about
sporting them for the rest of one’s life. So one can experiment with dragons
breathing fire, cute little butterflies, the name of the actress you fancy,
rockets going to Mars, rangoli patterns, or the silhouette of the Goan
coastline. Or the shape of the fish you ate for lunch. A couple of baths later,
they fade and disappear.
You get sticker tattoos which you can
use for just one evening. Peel it off after you brush your teeth and before
crawling into the sheets.
Along the northern belt, there are
stalls and even proper designer tattoo boutiques where you can pay lots more
for what the tribal/gypsy-looking women do right on the sand outside. I’m told
there’s a difference in quality. Quite so, I guess, I’m no expert at rates, not
tattoo costs anyways. Besides, I believe that ‘mehndi’, once not so well-known
in Goa, now compulsory for every bride, is a sort of harmless temporary tattoo
anyway.
Tattoo is no longer a younger
person’s to-do thing. I’ve seen podgy matrons and knee-high toddlers sporting
cute little designs on the backs of their hands, calves, cheeks, and some
unmentionable places, too (like the back of the neck).
I’m told the
cost varies between less than hundred rupees to a couple of thousands.
Bargaining works. So, I’m going to tattoo passwords on convenient sites on my
anatomy which are not visible to others: in between my fingers, for example, or
on the soles of my feet before I forget them.
Once the skin-work is done, I’m going
to concentrate on my teeth. After bars, restaurants, taxis and two-wheeler
renting, the next most lucrative business in Goa is dentistry. That’s another
article.
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