Now, tattoos to express anguishThey were looking for some sort of an outlet for their angst when they met tattoo artiste Ganesh Kedari. Last week, a group of children and young adults from a chawl in Ghorpodi got temporary tattoos depicting Mumbai under seize. "In the aftermath of what happened in Mumbai, there is a lot of anger and need for some sort of a retaliation. There are mixed feelings about war. When we met Kedari, we thought this could be one outlet," says Ram Sonawane, whose nephews got tattoos done by Kedari. "They want to flaunt them at the chawl. Typically a tattoo would have earned them a rebuke from their parents, but as this was done in a patriotic fervour, their parents are quite all right with it," he says. One of the boys has a military tank drawn, to show war might be an option; two boys have an image of an NSG commando being dropped from a helicopter, the others have images of the Taj and the Oberoi and the Mumbai skyline. "All of us decided to get different images done," says Sachin, Sonawane's nephew. "We wanted to put up banners of Sandeep Unnikrishnan, and the three martyred police chiefs, but we couldn't find Unnikrishnan's picture. It is important that we take these children beyond thoughts of retaliation and revenge and do something constructive," says Sonawane. Kedari says that besides these children, he had already done two permanent tattoos on people with Mumbai as the theme. "They wanted it done as a show of support," he says. While this is fairly common in the West – after the September 11, 2001 attacks, similar tattoos were popular in the US; it is yet to catch on in India. Tattoo parlous in Koregaon Park say they had not received such requests from clients. "Perhaps clients will come, it is too early to say," says one tattoo parlour owner.
