Second Tattoo

I got my first tattoo done about two years ago and talked about my experience here. It got me thinking on inking again. The same rules of What, Where, Who and When applied here too.

The 'WHO' was the easy part as I was sure I would want to get it done again at Dark Arts Studio in Bangalore where I got my first tattoo done and preferably from Satish Palan who did my first tattoo as well.

The 'WHERE' part was also almost pre-decided. If you read my first tattoo blog you will realise that I was thinking of getting the tattoo done either on my upper or lower part of the hand. Since the first one had been on the upper part of the hand, I decided that the second one would be on the forearm.

The 'WHAT' part got me thinking since I wanted the second one to mean something very personal. The first tattoo had been of Lord Ganesha as I had always wanted to start that way. The second tattoo's idea had already started germinating in my mind for some time. I wanted my family's names as a tattoo and the more I thought about it, the more it seemed awesome since the names were interlinked. My wife's name is Anindita or Ani for short, my daughter's name is Ipsita and my son's name is Tarush. If you look closely, as I did when I started thinking of a design, you can link them with Ani leading into Ipsita leading into Tarush or in other words AnIpsiTArush. So that was fixed. I wanted this to be an inner circle with the outer circle saying Beautiful Soul as these three were the beautiful soul of my life. Two concentric circles - AnIpsiTArush as inner and Beautiful Soul as outer.

The most difficult part was the 'WHEN' part as I just could not find the time in my busy schedule. In between travelling and family time, I was not able to take the required time out to visit Dark Arts. In the meantime, I had been speaking to my best friend, Sowmya Ramachandran, and getting her psyched to get a tattoo done as well. We had been discussing for quite some time about the possibility. 30th Nov was her birthday and we got discussing about the possibility of her getting her tattoo done on that day. I had a tentative appointment for her at Dark Arts and when she finally decided to get it done, I decided to accompany her and get my second one done as well. So the first tattoo was on Ganesh Chaturthi and the second one on my best friend's birthday.

When we landed up at Dark Arts, we got to Sowmya's design first. She wanted to get a Sun done and as she was being shown some designs, I got a chance to explain my 'concentric circle' design to Preeti. Sowmya quickly decided on a flaming Sun with a V (for Vedanth, her son) morphing into a R (for Raj, her husband) in the centre of the Sun. As I got discussing with them on my idea, we quickly realised that having so many alphabets in a circle may make it illegible. As Preeti showed me some fonts, we finalised on a beautiful cursive font which would give it some flair. The stencil looked good and we were set.

Sowmya's tattoo took a good hour to get done and it did pain a bit for her as she was getting it done right at the pulse area on her wrist. The end result is really good. Satish got started on mine after her's was done. And it took all of 2-1/2 hours to get it done. As I had mentioned earlier, this time too it wasn't very bad. There were moments when it did pain a bit but mostly it was like a small needle pricking you softly. After some time you sort of get used to it and it doesn't even register. At the end of 2-1/2 hours by 10.00pm, my tattoo was done and I had my second ink.

The tattoo is big, taking up almost 3/4 of the arm. I jokingly mention to people that now I can't even have an affair as the girl will ask whose names are those on your hand and when I tell her that its my wife and kids, I'm sure she'll disappear. :) But what better way to show commitment and love for my family than to have them tatto-ed on my body with the fact that they are the Beautiful Soul of my life!

What do I tell my daughter? And my sister?

A young, starry-eyed, ambitious girl was brutally gangraped by 6 people in a moving bus in Delhi and dumped on the ground. Over the last 10 days, Delhi has erupted with protests with students taking to the streets demanding justice; politicians have exposed their stupidity with constantly putting their foot in their mouth questioning the freedom that girls have, questioning the make-up that they put, mentioning that girls invite this on themselves and stating that girls are 'dented-and-painted'; a policeman lost his life battling the protests; government has clamped down on the protests turning Delhi into a fortress and the social media has gone beserk with demands of public hanging, public castrations and capital punishment for the rapists. Questions are being raised on how Indian men, administrators and politicians treat women, what our laws are and how we need to change the basic fabric of our values where we treat women as things to be owned. How we need to change the thinking at the basic level of a girl child and how we need to treat boys and girls as equal. Extremely brilliant articles on the right approach have been written by my close friend Sandeep Menon and some articles have been re-posted on other friend's facebook pages like this one.

This is not one of those write-ups. I do not know how to write eloquently and while I have an opinion on the subject like everyone else, this write-up is not about that. This write-up is about fear and insecurity and helplessness!

I got 'introduced' to the concept of rape when I was 8 years old when the movie 'Insaaf ka Tarazu' was released and movie magazines carried reams of articles about it. My mom was an avid reader and I picked up one of the magazines to find out what rape meant. While at that age I thought it meant a man and woman wrestling, with time I understood the horror of it and struggled to comprehend why a man would do something like that. What instinct drives a man to force himself on a woman and rape her? India has the dubious distinction of being the third worst offender in rape cases and a rape occures in India every 54 minutes! 25 women are raped every day in India and we have done nothing to protect them. We have made speeches and spoken about it when incidents occur but we have done nothing to protect our women or give them a feeling of safety. We have not changed our laws, we have not ensured that rape cases are dealt with in a speedy manner and we have not punished rapists in a manner consumerate with the crime. Neither have we sensitised our largely-male police force nor have we equipped them with more women who may understand this crime. In fact a sting operation by Tehelka revealed Police Officers saying that no rape can happen without the girl's consent! Some rapists have gone on to become politicians and some politicians have raped women with impunity and used the system to cover their tracks. Police work hand-in-glove with the rapists and today we had a case where a young woman comitted suicide because she was being constantly called to the police station and questioned about her rape.


As a father of a 10 year old girl and a brother of a single woman in Mumbai, I was scared when I read the first news of the gangrape and have been getting progressively more afraid as I've heard our politicians talk about the 'remedies' to this 'problem'.

Women should not go out late at night, women should not put make-up and lipstick, women should not dress provacatively, women should not wear jeans, women should not smoke and drink, women should not go to discotheques, women should not take private buses late at night, women should not do this and should not do that. What kind of a country and world are we creating when we cannot offer a simple basic right of safety to a human being? Does a woman have to be constantly on her guard from the moment she steps out from her house? And sometimes even in her own house? Does society need to dictate on how she talks and walks and moves and dresses and works? Who has given us the right to do this? The biggest hypocrisy stems from the fact that in Hinduism we pray to Godesses for wealth (Lakshmi), knowledge (Saraswati) and strength (Durga) and then go out and commit the most horrid crimes on women.

My sister stays alone in Mumbai, is independent and highly successful and goes out to parties, has some drinks and has a good time with friends. Should I tell her not do that? Should I tell her that she could be a potential target? As my daughter grows up, she may decide to wear short clothes for outings, wear jeans and tops, wear some make-up, go out to disco with friends and party with them. I may not like some of these things but these are her educated decisions to make - not mine and definitely not society's. Do I tell my daughter to avoid all these 'im-moral' things and stay at home? When she steps out of the house, do I now equip her with protection in form of a small knife, some pepper spray and some alarms? But why should I? Doesn't she have the right to walk the road free of fear?

When a close friend like Arundhati Ghosh puts up a status update that says - "I travel a lot and many days of the month I land up late at airports of cities I have come to love, cities with friends and memories, cities with sounds and smells that make me want to call it home. Today as I leave for yet another city I am worrying about what transport I should take from the airport to reach my hotel, is it judicious to land as late as 8 pm, should I keep a small pen knife in my bag but then I will have to check it in, when i get into the cab should I pretend to call people so that the driver thinks I have people who will worry about me if I dont land up in time, will I be able to do my general chit chat with the driver or should i just keep to myself and not talk too much.....yes ...I dont want to turn into a person I would loathe to be." - it makes me worry! This is a woman I respect tremendously and this statement from her makes me hang my head in shame.

I have been brought up by my parents to respect women and I think I've done that. I am bringing up my son with the same values that women are precious, strong beings that you should respect. I am bringing up my daughter with the thought that she is an equal and can do whatever she wants to and whatever a boy/man can do. There is no distinction! But are the other parents out there teaching their boys the same thing? Will my daughter find the respect and the safety that she needs, nay is entitled to, in the outside world?

I don't have answers for my daughter. And my sister? What do I tell them? What kind of a world and country is my daughter growing up into?