THE HENNA DAY

It was afternoon, the sun was blazing in the bright blue sky, I tried to see it but the light of the sun dimmed my eyes, I shielded my eyes with my hand, the white clouds were moving randomly, the wind was little warm, I stood in the balcony, viewing the sunny scene,

“What to do now?”

My mind wandered, I had no idea, I looked down and saw Henna tree slowly moving its leaves, from the warm winds, I got stuck with an idea, it had been days since I applied Mehndi on my hands, my hands looked blank,

“Time to design you”

I happily stepped down and went out and plucked the Henna leaves, one by one, I loved the smell of those leaves which were spindle in shape, as I was plucking the leaves a green spider slowly crawled over my hand,

“Oh, you little spidy”

It was too small, so I let it go, it crawled to a nearby branch,

“Don’t intrude again, little one”

I plucked enough of fresh Henna leaves. I went inside my home, washed those leaves well in water. I put them in the mixer jar and made it into fine smooth paste. I remembered that in my childhood days my grandma used to make Henna paste with the roller stone which we call Ammi kallu in my Tamil language, now the time had changed; old equipment was replaced by modern equipment.

But the memories of past would always be a part of us. After making the paste I took plastic sheet and made it into a cone, and then I filled it with the Henna paste and tied it up. Finally Mehndi cone was ready.

I made a tiny pore on the apex of the cone and ready to make designs on my hand. I decided to apply floral design on my left palm. I started from the middle of the palm with a medium sized henna dot. I drew a small spiral around it and made some curves around it. I drew some petals around the central bulb of the flower. In order to make it beautiful, I drew some fine line design around the central bulb. As the flower was complete, I made leaves, spirals and small dots around the flower. I successfully designed the palm, now the fingers were remaining. I drew leaves and small dots, also fine lines at the tips of fingers and completed the Mehndi design.

I waited for six hours for it to dry. Then I washed my hands and was stunned to see how dark red the Mehndi design was. Normally, the readymade Mehndi cones didn’t have this much color effect, but the natural one had the best color effect. Nature was always better than artificial, I winded up the day with that thought.