Do you still remember what I have written a few
months ago about the Nepalese calendar? You know that we are writing 2071 here
and start the year on 14th April according to our calendar. If you
are good at math then now you already know that we just finished the fourth
month of this calendar. This month is called Shrawan which is a really special
period for the Hindu people. It was about a month ago when I noticed that a lot
more women – and sometimes even men – were wearing beautiful henna on their
hands than before. Also, yellow and green bracelets (bangles) appeared on the
counters of all the small beauty shops by the streets.
After asking several local about this mystery I
slowly started to put the puzzle together: I got to know that the month of
Shrawan is dedicated to lord Shiva, the most important god in Hindu mythology.
In this month, women wear the henna – which is called mehndi here – and the
bangles to take care of their relationships. Married women wear it, because it
is said to bring good luck a good health for their husbands (!), young girls
might ask their boyfriends to give bangles to them, because it is supposed to
strengthen their relationship, or they can just simply wear it in order to have
luck in their future relationships.
The darkness of the henna is not meaningless
either. After having drawn the beautiful patterns on the hand or feet and
having waited at least an hour before removing the material, it is said to take
about 24 hour for the henna to darken and show its final colour. According to
Nepalese people, the darker the mehndi becomes, the more the woman will be
loved by her husband. Of course there are some tricks to ‘strengthen’ this love
as well: after having the patterns drawn, most women add lemon and sugar on the
mehndi to increase the colour, and some also put plastic bag on it for some
time to let it dry slower which will again result in more intense colour. So
girls, these are the Nepalese tricks, if you would like to have happy and
loving relationships! By the way, for me there’s still something grotesque in
all this placing it in the context of all the arranged marriages and the
local’s ‘natural’ explanations according to which love will automatically come
after the marriage...
Anyway, after getting to know all this of
course I also walked up to a man drawing beautiful mehndis by the edge of the
road in Swayambhunath and – after bargaining for some time – finally we agreed
in the pattern and the price of ‘my future luck’. Well, I asked for a pattern
covering my palm and half of my arm. When by next day, the part on my palm turned
pretty dark, while the other part remained mostly light brown, I started
wondering about the meaning of this: maybe I will be loved a lot until halftime
and after that no so much? :) Well, probably a more scientific
explanation would just be that the mehndi turns darker where the skin is
thicker... Well, we will see how much luck my mehndi is going to bring me, but
it’s for sure that i have been walking proudly with it for quite a few days,
while all my students were amazed by how beautiful the pattern was.
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