Henna Lady

 Vile Parle is 10 minutes away from where we live. It is has a down market shopping street. There are shops on the right and left of the busy road with a traffic barrier all the way down the middle. This makes life quite difficult; you cannot cross the road whenever and wherever you want. So if you want to withdraw money for example there are two ATMs; one on this side, and one on the other. You either have to walk all the way to the end of the street or find a gap in this concrete barrier. There is also an old river not flowing under a bridge. There are big water hydrants for some unknown reason and the smell of stale, stagnant water reminds you of rubbish, rotten vegetables, old shoes submerged in the water without their owner, rags of some description and how it would be when it rains in a couple of months’ time.

There are shopping arcades, children’s clothes shops, ‘western’ outfits, traditional Indian clothes, t-shirts, leggings, fruit stalls, bags, expensive fake Guccis, PBs, wedding sari shops,  tiny stalls which sell freshly roasted chickpeas and a dark root. It is as ugly and crooked as ginger root but completely blackened through being buried and slowly coal roasted. They present it broken open. The flesh inside is pleasantly white. I dare not try.

 In this crowded street of people, stalls, and auto- rickshaws, a woman sits on a metal folding chair in front of a wedding sari shop. I went in the shop once. Lovely young girls with their mothers and mother- in- laws were choosing shimmery saris. They looked at me with disbelief. What could an aging gora want from a sari shop?  There are lots of people in these shops, I can’t tell who the shop assistant is or who the shopper, the owner. They all look at me with the same indifference.  I try to catch their eye to ask a question, they each and every one of them murmur something to one another. Finally I they tell me that the henna lady will be there in the afternoon.

 She sits in front of the shop on a simple folding chair. She has her little shoulder bag and some books. There are a bunch of cones on the little stool next to her. You sit down opposite her. Either you choose a design or she creates one there and then. She squeezes the cone and there comes out lattices, bridges, flowers, rows and rows of black henna nozzles out on to your hand.  We chat while she is doing it. She has two children, one boy, and one girl. The boy is studying law, the girl administration.  They speak fluent French. Her husband is in the construction business. Her name is Jayshree. Her husband finds this beautiful name too long, calls her Jay. She comes there after 5.00 in the afternoon. She is not only a henna lady. She is an artist. She can henna long feathered peacocks, lucky palaces or   your and your husband’s portraits on your fore arms. She does with little hand movements, gently squeezing the cone full of henna. People walk by they stop and ask questions in Hindi. She stops, explains and gives her price. She goes to wedding ceremonies as well. All day she would sit at a corner where the young girls fill the room with giggles almost entranced by the large number of females under one room talking about marriage and men and other things married couples do.

 Kitty has been to her before. This is her second henna. Mehendi they call it here. She wants a longer one covering her palm, back of her hand and arm. It takes her ten minutes to cover Kitty’s arm. She leaves dark intricate trails of shapes interlocking, following one another. She invites us for dinner; we learn that she does not cook too spicy food. She likes Shiva like me but her favourite is Parvarti, Shiva’s devoted wife. In the evenings she watches Hindi soaps about their love and peace.  The children are grown up now, they are not interested in Shiva stories, they want to go to France.  We invite him to England for Kitty’s high school graduation.   On that small chair, in the heart of Irla Street, we chuckle away over squeezed henna. There is a sweet smell of burning sandal wood. A man walks pass with a huge orange turban, earphones dangling down his white shirt.  A bare foot man pushes a hand barrow full of cauliflowers; young ladies go in and out of the sari shop. It is getting dark slowly. Time to go home.