It’s that back to school week and we are rushing completing assignments
and projects at the nth hour as is the norm in our household. My daughter
screams that the printer cartridge has run out of ink! She was midway printing
the project on memories of the vacation she had. The vacation image came out
with half the Chinese fishing net picture we took.
Ink has always been associated with memories. It was always
a nice feeling to smell ‘Brill’ ink on your answer sheets provided it was a
History paper and you knew the answers well. They would simply flow and smell
so good…unfortunately by the time it reaches the teacher who corrected, it would
turn dry and would be overpowered with the fresh red ink smell imprinting far
less marks than what you expected. Ink on inland letters smelt of exchange of
emotions between loved ones. Ink in an early morning newspaper smelt of the
joys and sorrows of the world around us. The inked emotions in an autograph
book smelt of memories even after decades. Finally we waited until we turned 18 for that
spot of indelible ink on our finger nails and would proudly display our role in
electing the governance, but the life of it was also only a couple of weeks.
And then it happened. The young started to ink their bodies.
Though history of this practice could be traced as far as ancient Egyptian
mummies, today we see millennials all for inking themselves. The irony is that
though they belong to a generation of shortened attention / interest spans and
lead a life lead by the pleasures of instant gratifications they find great pride
to flaunt their body parts indelibly inked with permanent images and symbols of
their instant experiences or their instant expression of love. An engagement ceremony
these days happen in Tattoo parlors.
They do not realize a ring is far easier to be done away
with than tattoo. ‘I do’ has made way to ‘I ink’! But when we said ‘I do’ it
was followed by ‘until death do us apart’. With ‘I Ink’ these days it can also
mean even death cannot do us apart. Yeah you heard it right. Even though the
relationships today do not last the drying time required for a tattoo, people
now want to be connected to their loved ones after they are gone by having a
Memorial Tattoo. A pinch of the funerary ash of your loved one mixed in ink is
all that you need to get you connected. The world continues to amaze me every
single day with the level of craziness it is capable of throwing at me!
It is easy to ink your lady’s name if it is a ‘Priya’ and
later on when a Russian ‘Yanka’ walks into your life, you simply amend the tattoo
and make it 'Priyanka' in the ‘Nick’ of time.
So before inking each other’s names please choose a partner with an amendable
name and even death cannot do you apart!
From Dust we came and
to tattoo we return!
