Back in secondary school, some of my classmates (Mauritians of Indian descent) were applying mehndi (also written as mehendi/mehandi and known as henna) on their hands during lunch break and they applied some on me and on anyone else who wanted to try. It was kind of fashionable at that time. That was fun. :) I even bought an expensive book on mehndi designs back then but unfortunately, I wasn’t good at applying mehndi on myself.

Today,one of my friends who is from India brought henna paste (the cone type) and she applied it on my hand. While she was applying the paste on my hand, I was thinking of my secondary school days. I miss those days. :(

I didn’t have a particular design in mind and she chose one for me; flowers, leaves,butterflies,vines etc. Next time, I’ll see if she can help me do a more complicated design. She did a peacock on another girl’s hand and it looked great!

I took a few photos of my hand after she was done:
hand-mehndi

hand-mehndi

hand-mehndi
I remember that my Mauritian friends were saying that lime and some sugar are supposed to be applied on the design to make the color become darker or last longer. I’m not sure which one it is.

We didn’t have lime or sugar with us. About 1 hour later when the henna paste was completely dry, I scratched it off my hand but I didn’t wash my hand. I have to avoid contact with water if I want the color to darken.
hand-mehndi
The color is orange in this photo but now it has turned dark brown. I’ll try to take another photo tomorrow.
The mehndi design will fade away after about 2 weeks.

I was looking around for mehndi designs and came across this page. Nice huh? :) It’s a bit too much for me but this one is still okay. :)

I just found my Indian bangles. I bought many bangles in Mauritius and my sisters also sent me some when I was in Shanghai. I also have some bindis. :P I’ll wear some of them to class tomorrow. (the bangles, not the bindis! :mrgreen: )
Here’s a photo of my blues bangles.
bangles
(this photo was previously posted in an entry back in 2006)

17 Responses to “Mehndi on my hand”

Leave a Reply