Almost final India...

I've collected here some photos and stories from my last days. I'll start chronologically... I finally asked a local about the henna/mehndi hands that the girls have!
Helga and I were sitting at an airport, waiting for a plane and saw this girl sitting nearby who had her hands and feet painted in this intricate patterns, all the way past her elbows and we couldn't see how far up her legs. Well we didn't ask her - it's not as if we talk to complete strangers... much.
Next day I had a helper at another day of me doing my job and I noticed she had painted hands - what a perfect opportunity! And so since I knew very little about it and didn't know what was true and what wasn't, I asked and took photos!
So these are patterns which are done on type of a hen's night - a few nights before a wedding, when the girls get together to for some final bit of fun. They sing songs, dance and do the mehndi (what it's called in India). It takes a long time to dry and still develops for a few days so it has to be done few days before the wedding. Now most girls will learn how to do this and will practice the patterns on paper before attempting the mehndi on skin but for a wedding a special person who is very good at it will be hired (a woman of course - no men allowed). The bride will have very intricate designs done on her hands and up to her upper arms and her feet and legs up to and sometimes above her knees. The other girls have smaller and simpler designs done. In the case of my 'subject', she didn't want too many designs because of how long it takes to dry. But refusing a mehndi completely can spell bad luck and the girl who refuses might never find a husband.
So she had some simple flower patterns done on her hands and some others on her fingers. The designs are not very dark because she washed it off quickly before it had a chance to develop into a dark colour. Mehndi also reacts to heat - so people who have hotter body heat will develop almost black designs while cooler temp people will have orange colours. The girl told me that the designs don't really mean anything, they just supposed to look pretty and hide the name and sometimes profile of the new his face, painted on the hands (or feet).
This is where the really sweet part of this tradition comes to light. Marriages in India are of course still arranged. Most of the time the newlyweds know each other now before the wedding but in the olden days they didn't. And so this tradition served as an 'icebreaker' - that's how the girl put it. :-) So on the wedding night the bride and groom got to know each other by him looking for his name hidden in her mehndi painted hands.

To take this post to a completely different level (and not a higher one at all!!) after the girl told me this story, I had a pedicure and a manicure booked in the hotel beauty salon where I was being 'done' in between a very different and new marriage...
Imagine my surprise when I was put in a chair on on either side of me was 'part' of the marriage. On one side were 2 very young (early 20's) women in black abayas and head scarves who had their abayas (the black sack a woman wears in Saudi Arabia for example) hitched up to their knees and their trousers which they wore underneath also pulled up, since they were having their pedicures done. Their hands had the henna on them - one very detailed and the other less so. They were talking in that beautiful guttural Arabic (which I'm sorry but sometimes sounds like a Chinese man working on his phlegm!) to a man who was also having his pedicure done. A 50+ year old man wearing the white thobe and a head scarf was sitting on my other side - he didn't have his toe nailed painted by the way. They were talking like this over me, as my ears wilted and I of course was trying to figure out their story. No strange men were allowed in the room at the time since the ladies were showing their ankles (but I was OK as another woman - I'm not really the no-lady-no man!) so obviously the man was family.
The younger girl and the man were finished with their pedicures and were waiting for the older girl who decided to switch colours mid-painting so had to have hers cleaned and re-painted. Well obviously the man was getting impatient and the younger girl who was also ready, got up from the chair and stood next to the man. That's when the man did the unbelieveable thing for Saudis and put his arm around her waist, very suggestive - almost porn by Saudi standards!
So, OH MY GOD, they were obviously married!!!
The couple then left the salon, leaving the older girl behind. She got very, very upset and started growling and chewing phlegm in Arabic - I assumed she was almost swearing. She yelled at the girl who was drying her nails and shoooed her away.
[I then briefly noticed the sight which is,, unfortunately, burned into my mind forever - the girl had hairy legs - short obviously growing out hair, about 2-3mm but FUCK there was lots of it!!!]
Anyway she pulled down her trousers, down went the floor length abaya, on came the shoes that destroyed the unfinished pedicure and off she ran after the couple!
I looked at the women around me, probably looked shocked and said - "Very old husband and very young wife!"
The ladies looked back at me and one said - "Very old husband and two wives!"

But damn, those legs were hairy!!! And no, I didn't take any photos.