By Nisah Allauddin

Bridal henna design. Photo courtesy of Vogue Images.

The thick brown paste quickly runs out of henna tubes and onto people’s hands, leaving a stain that darkens over the next couple of days. Millions of girls around the world get their hands covered with intricate henna designs to celebrate special events and moments in their culture. Henna tattoos derive from the henna plant, also known as the mendi or mignonette plant, which grows to be 12-15 feet high. The mashed leaves are used to create a paste, one that people in the Middle East and India use as a way to decorate their skin or color their hair.

Henna designs, called mehndi in many parts of the world, originated in Egypt. Mehndi is said to be 9000 years old and was originally used as a cooling mechanism by people traveling through the desert. People who were trapped in the desert heat for long periods of time would crush up several leaves and sink their limbs in the paste to cool them down. As people started to use henna as sun repellent, they started to make designs, until it eventually developed into a way of decorating the body.

In the Islamic world, the delicately drawn mehndi designs are used to mark significant moments in women’s lives. It is first drawn on a girl’s hand for their bismillah, a ceremony for when a girl first says the Islamic words “Bismillah ir rahman niraheem,” meaning “In the name of God, the most gracious and the most merciful.” This ceremony marks the entrance of a girl’s life into the Islamic world. Mehndi is also used traditionally on Eid, a Muslim religious holiday that happens two times a year. Usually, the henna design is more simple and casual for Eid, the design being on either only one hand or just one side of a hand. The most amusing tradition is Chand Raat, the night before Eid. On Chaand Raat, girls gather and draw henna designs on each other. If any girls don’t know how to draw with mendhi, they just sing and laugh. Chaand Raat literally translates to the “night of the moon,” and Muslim girls stay up all night drawing mehndi on each other before the Eid ceremony the next day.

In Indian and Hindu culture, mehndi is used for festivals like Karwa Chauth, Diwali, and Rakhi. Karwa Chauth is the fourth day after a full moon in the Hindu month Katika, and on this day women fast for their husbands and celebrate their marriage. On Rakhi, another Hindu holiday, women put mehndi on to celebrate their brothers. Sikhism, another religion whose origins derive from India, also incorporates mehndi use for celebration. Collegiate students Anjun Dhillon (‘24) and Sanjum Sandu (‘24) both grew up in Sikh households, where girls also wear mehndi for special occasions. Dhillon said she “usually only wears it for weddings,” and Sandu said she wears it for “Punjabi Mela and for weddings.” Sanjum said Punjabi Mela “is a festival put on by SACVI [Sikh Association of Central Virginia], where people do bhangra dances and eat Punjabi food. I go to the temple (gurdwara) and pray, then I also light sparklers and fireworks with my close family and friends.” Aside from Hindu and Punjabi traditions, mehndi is also used in almost all of the different cultures in India.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons user AKS.9955.

In several cultures, one of the most important times for mehndi in a woman’s life is their engagement. For their engagement, women usually get a complex design covering the arms. The time when a woman gets the most mehndi drawn on her is when she gets married. Muslim weddings have four events, and the first event is called Mehdi. The Mehndi is a ceremony when the bride gets her mehndi drawn on and women dance traditionally around her all night. Women tend to get their hands covered front to back, up to their elbow, and get designs drawn on their feet. The most romantic part of the mehndi designs for a bride is the inscription of her husband’s name hidden somewhere in the complex design. Throughout the couple’s wedding, the husband is assigned the task to find it. After women get married, they traditionally do not wear mehndi as much, but mehndi is still worn for Eid and for their child’s wedding.

Along with mehndi being used as an art, it is also used for medicinal purposes. Henna is known to have healing properties, and people will sometimes ingest or inhale it to help with fevers, headaches, and stomach aches. It is also rubbed onto wounds, used for athlete’s foot, and to prevent hair loss. Mehndi helps with repelling the sun and insects, and by applying it on animals’ noses it helps to prevent sunburn and to keep insects from living on them.

Traditional mehndi design. Photo credit: Rakhi Bazaar

In Richmond, many people bond over mehndi. Often at Pakistani cultural events, there are henna artists hired as a form of entertainment. Many henna artists in Richmond also invite clients to their homes and draw mehndi on their hands. I mainly do henna on myself or my friends, and we draw it on each other. I see henna most often drawn by my friends and family because we are always celebrating the same Muslim holidays together.