CHENNAI : As the soft ocean’s breeze rushes toward the busy road at the Marina, the soft whir of machinery interrupts the tranquil moment. Several stamps with designs hand drawn on them are carefully arranged on the blue tarp held down by a metal box. Inside, a tattoo gun and colours are carefully kept among papers with more patterns and designs.Dressed in an orange lungi and faded white shirt, Ramki G calls out to visitors, enticing them to get a tattoo. A man approaches him and thrusts out his arm, which is covered in little black dots. Ramki wipes his hand with an antiseptic and then quickly draws another dot using a handmade tattoo gun.
“I picked up how to tattoo people from watching my father. He used to be in the same profession. Back then, they used to use a needle or a thorn from a neem plant and make the colour by mixing mother’s milk and powdered curry leaves. Later, they shifted to cow’s milk. But now, we use artificial ink,” said Ramki, a Chennai local whose family lives in Vellore.
Pachai kutthal, the traditional tattoo art in Tamil Nadu, was supposedly done on men leaving for war or for work. Their names would be drawn onto their arms for identification. Slowly, it developed into a more stylistic and artistic form of self-expression. Tribes in south India like the Toda would draw tattoos similar to the pattern and design of their clothing. Tribes in the north would have tattoos either for identification, protection from invaders or as a talisman to ward away evil.
Ramki buys the tools from a local mechanical store to make his own handmade gun, with a needle made of a thin metal wire. His temporary tattoos range from stars and flowers to pictures of Buddha and Dr BR Ambedkar. He carves the patterns by hand on thin rubber sheets, which he dips in the ink he purchases from a special retailer in Goa and presses onto the skin. Ramki explained that he would carve the designs on the soles of old rubber slippers but switched to the more transportable rubber slips. He charges Rs 150 to Rs 200 for a permanent tattoo, and Rs 50 for a temporary tattoo.
On the busy street in College Road, Irezumi is a Bengaluru-based tattoo parlour that opened a branch in Chennai in 2006 by founder Naveen Kumar. The tattoo parlour employs artists who specialise in various forms of body art such as portraits, watercolours and black-and-white art. Their equipment is imported from China and Germany, and the cost of their tattoos depends on the design and size of the tattoo.“We have very high standards of cleanliness in our parlour. All our equipment is cling-wrapped when not in use, and we use disposable needles. Our ink is also of proper quality,” said Naveen. Needles that are reused can cause hepatitis C, hepatitis B and tuberculosis.
Naveen explains that the older style of pachai kuthal was hygienic in the way in which they reuse needles and use organic dyes, which are better for the body. Tattoos that are hand drawn on by needles also hurt less and have less bleeding. However, he urges all tattoo artists to follow the highest standardsof hygiene when practising their art.