Presently I have two tattoos , however here I would like to talk about my first tattoo which will always hold a very special place in my heart .
As a child I always got facinated by tattoos but also wasn’t sure wether I will be able to deal with something so permanent. I belong to a middle class Indian family and being the only daughter made my parents extremely protective about me . They took an orthodox approach with more than one societal norms and getting a tattoo was something they could never imagine. I was always closer to my mother and tried discussing my desire of getting inked but her reactions were never positive , also she was always more worried about the fact that my father will never accept a tattoo and might just disown me.
That fear kept building up inside me ,so did my desire until one day when that very fear motivated me to decide the theme of my tattoo.
Liberty!! Yes that’s what I wanted at that point in my life . I was 22 and wanted to fly high like a free bird. I surely respect my father and love him immensely but that couldn’t be a factor why I should perceive things the way he does. I wanted to pursue my dreams, travel the world, lead life on my terms , I wished to be liberated. For the first time, the rebel inside me emerged. A little voice inside me whispered “ Girl , just do it , it will all be worth “
That is when I reached out to a friend who is a tattoo artist .I explained the concept and the whole idea behind it . She understood the depth. She took 3 months and 5 rejections from my end to finally convince me with the tattoo which I wear for life now.
Check out the below image of the freshly inked beauty on my back . This is as raw as my memory of it . She took one seating and 4 hours to ink this.
PS: Now let me share the incidents which followed. I got inked , returned home . Thankfully it was winter. I kept my tatoo hidden for almost a month as I couldn’t gather the courage to reveal it to my parents. Finally after a month on my birthday, I showed it to my mom .
She was shocked, amazed but surprisingly not angry( maybe because it was my birthday :P )
She looked at it very closely and said “ It’s beautiful… but where did you get the money to ink this?
“I managed to save maa ….” we both laughed!!
Typical mothers right ? She had no idea what a tattoo is and how it is inked . She was against it for no specific reason. However the battle was half won till then. When my father saw this , he was furious.He wanted me to get it removed , he told me how this is not acceptable in “our society” how going forward this will affect my personality and no guy would marry me cuz apparently no guy’s family will accept something so funky and indecent like a tattoo. 4 years and I don’t think he has still been able to accept my tattoos but I am thakful he hasn’t disowned me yet . I think now he is just a little proud of me :)