Biography 15: Henna

 In my childhood, we lived in our grandparent's house with them. Later my father became the owner of the house. After moving out from that house, the tenant lived there for a long time. Then my dad sold that house to support the expenses. Though he didn't get all the money, a middle person took a big part of it.

Image source: https://youtu.be/_magzq70kU4

Beside that house, there was a henna tree. It was about 5 feet long. It had big leaves and its colour was very dark. If anyone put it on the palm for a long time, the colour would become darkish red. Our neighbours always took the leaves during Eid and other occasions. I have seen girls use to mash the leaves on "Sheel pata"/ GRINDSTONES. Then the mashed leaves looked like cow dung. So, obviously, I didn't want to put that on my hand. Girls use to use a small stick, sometimes matches to make a design on the hand.

Later in our city "Beauty parlour" culture came. Then they started using a cone to make a henna design on people's hands. By this time, I grew up and understood the difference between cow dung and henna. I liked the cone style and always try to make some designs during Eid, twice a year. Still, I make designs on my hand during Eid. I'm not good at it, but I like the smell of henna. When I was living in Bangladesh, at home I put henna on everyone's hand. Even I tried to motivate boys to put some henna design on their palms. Sometimes succeed. Especially I did this on my dad's hand. He liked it too. But then when he went to the mosque, started feeling shame and tried to hide his hand.

Now a day I try to convince my son to put henna, but he said, it looks like cow dung, I'm not going to touch it.