To Sonali...

mehndi

She must be some ten summers old. When the waves sweep over the shore, a breeze nudges her tresses onto her face. Her ragged old skirt flutters.
Ask her name and she smiles shyly revealing a half-bent tooth that looks like a piano-key held midway by an invisible finger.

On her bare feet, she travels hurriedly across the sands, through this vast maze of shifting humanity asking in her low voice “ Mehndi lagaon*? Mehndi lagaon”?

After a while someone would oblige.Mostly for their own delight.Sometimes out of sympathy to her plight.
As the mehndi grows and takes shape they would sit there enamoured by the colour and the design that unfolds, unmindful of the tiny hand that colours.

It is beautiful and complete now.

Between the coloured and the colouring hands, a note of currency, is exchanged. And with that a silent social denomination too. After that, the hands withdraw to their respective worlds.

Her world is simple. Through her colours, she is permitted only to touch another world. And to keep on touching as many worlds.
No less. No more.

To the sea with its sinking sun, there exists just one world, a world in which another day in summer has ticked.Just like any other summer wherein a dream melts and flows as shame.

~Juhu Beach , Bombay. (Summer of 05)

Mehndi- N.Hindi.a colouring extract from a plant called Henna ,used as an application to decorate the skin.

*Mehndi lagaon? : Can I apply Mehndi?

Sonali-Hindi Female Proper noun , extensive in northern and western parts of India, means Golden.(ironic in the context).

www.makepovertyhistory.org