Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna

The title is the same name as a popular Bollywood song from the film Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, starring Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol. The translation of the song title is “Keep henna painted on your [hands].”

Just as people in America eagerly wait for Christmas Eve, millions of people in Pakistan, including me, eagerly await Chand Raat, Night of the Moon. Chand Raat is the night before Eid when a new crescent moon is sighted in the sky. While Muslims around the world refer to this night by different names, the excitement and expectations for it are universal. 

On Chand Raat, I remember all my cousins and friends gathered together for a night of fun, discussing plans for Eid outfits, and most importantly, putting on mehndi. Mehndi is referred to both as henna and the designs or art made with henna. On that night, my oldest sister became highly sought after because of her extraordinary mehndi skills, and girl after girl extended their hands out for her to apply mehndi on them. The craze for mehndi was so great that even young boys stopped caring about mehndi being a typically feminine activity and asked my sister to draw the Pakistani flag on their hands. The older women in my family wouldn’t really partake in applying intricate mehndi designs, remarking that mehndi was for young girls. If they were to put on mehndi, they settled for a simple design, such as a dark circle in the middle of their palm and completely colored in fingertips. 

When I was younger, half of my outfit for Eid was my mehndi. Older aunts and grandmothers turned my hands over in their palms to examine the details of my mehndi. I’d return the favor and admire their mehndi-covered fingernails. I remember my own grandmother, who had hands similar to theirs with mehndi applied all over her cracked fingernails and toenails like it was a salve. When it was fresh, her nails looked a deep, earthy red until it faded, looking more like a fiery orange as her nails grew out over the weeks. 

 At that point in my life, as a five- or six-year-old, I had never applied mehndi to my nails for two main reasons. For one, from what I had seen, it was a practice reserved for elderly ladies with cracked and jagged nails. Second, it was a commitment. On skin, mehndi usually washes off completely in a week or two. On nails, mehndi acts more like a stubborn stain, and the only way to get rid of it is to wait to clip off the overgrown fingernails. 

I wasn’t tempted enough to tether myself to the same characteristic for half a year. Until eighth grade, I didn’t know that I would need such a small part of myself to be constant. Middle school graduation was around the corner, and I felt the weight of trying to be a whole new person. I was going to high school, which not too long ago felt like such a foreign and faraway concept. Because Stuyvesant is in a different borough from where I live, for the first time in my life, I had to travel and use the MTA all by myself for the first time in my life. This felt like a terrifying task; I’d only ever rode on a bus a handful of times and never stepped foot onto a train before. These circumstances made me feel like I had to now appear more mature somehow, and in order to do that, I had to redefine myself by trying something new and out of my comfort-zone. Therefore, that Eid, I decided to paint my nails over with mehndi as a rite of passage towards an evolved version of myself. 

Peeling off the dried mehndi from nails feels similar to peeling off dried liquid glue from skin, except that mehndi tends to be less flaky, instead coming off in one piece. After the mehndi came off, my nails had a shine to them that highlighted the dirt brown hue of the stain. To my dismay, the sheen only lasted for a few minutes and easily disappeared with a quick rinse. Initially, I loved how the mehndi looked on my nails, and I’d constantly try to shape them with a nail filer I found in the kitchen drawers. Shaping my nails gave them a smooth feel and round look, which contributed to the put-together and neat aesthetic of the mehndi. 

 But, every week when I clipped my nails, I began to notice how the dirt brown faded into a neon orange. I hated looking at it. I became stuck in a cycle of reapplying my mehndi every time the orange started to peek through. Every time I picked up the mehndi cone to conceal the unwanted change that came with time, I felt a wave of regret wash over me. “Why did I do this to myself?”, I would think. After every application, I became incapacitated for a couple of hours, unable to use my hands as I patiently waited for the mehndi to dry. The satisfaction that peeling the dried mehndi off gave me vanished as the act started to become akin to a chore, but I couldn’t just abandon the choice I made. In this way, I entered high school with at least one thing that I hadn’t let myself change for almost three months. 

A few months into the fall semester of freshman year, I really wanted my plain nails back. I knew that I couldn’t avoid my mehndi fading to orange nor reapply it every time it got longer. My attention was then overtaken by the general hubbub of a busy school year, and I stopped maintaining my mehndi. As I let the unruly orange run wild, I realized that it wasn’t as off-putting as I used to believe. It looked especially pretty when I held my hand in front of my face towards the light and watched my nails glow a taffy orange as the light filtered through them. 

At one point, I asked my sister if she wanted to paint her nails with me, but she refused, claiming that “the mehndi wouldn’t go away.” I told her that it would once her nail grew out, but she remained adamant about her choice. While I really wanted us to have the shared experience, I had to respect her hesitancy. She wasn’t at a point in her life where this change seemed favorable—she might have feared regret or maybe just didn’t have a strong feeling about how mehndi looked on her nails, both of which are valid explanations for her choice. 

Instead of making me feel dismayed, her refusal became a learning moment for me in regards to my personal commitments. On a larger scale, this practice was a very small, almost unnoticeable change, but I made it a point to see my decision to the end despite the uncertainty I had throughout the process. Knowing that I can stand by my choices has given me a new sense of confidence in my decision-making as I navigate through high school. I’m more outspoken in my classes, more willing to take on rigorous courses, and have been involved in more extracurricular activities because I know I have the capacity to follow through with what I put on my plate. 

I’ve come to love what mehndi has done for my dedication. I started the practice thinking it would help me develop a more mature attitude, which ultimately it did. Yet, my choice came with frustrations that I had to learn how to overcome, such as being stuck in a cycle of rejecting change. I had to embrace the natural process of the mehndi fading into colors I wasn’t fond of originally, and the experience pushed me towards the realization that my choices come with consequences whether I choose to own them or not. I understood that my decisions didn’t become pointless when they started to introduce unwanted consequences. It was up to me to decide if I liked the way my commitments were impacting my life. I got lucky then, because I am very satisfied with the way mehndi strengthens my connection to my many responsibilities. 

Since that first time in eighth grade, I’ve piped mehndi onto my nails countless times. Sometimes, the application is a messy process because the mehndi always ends up in places I don’t want it. I’ve dirtied many bedsheets with mehndi stains, and my hands end up with quite a few stray dark brown marks. I’ve had the worst days of my sophomore year, the happiest days of my life, the most memorable hangouts with my friends, met the most beautiful people, and even butted heads with some very frustrating people, all while the tips of my nails continued to fade into a lighter and lighter orange. The best part is having a reminder of how far I’ve come and being able to see, in real time, how my life has changed as the mehndi changes colors and moves up along my nails.