I had a craze for drawing since class III. I learnt as much as I could in school. After class X, I learnt how to do tattoos and also began to learn other art forms which I could pursue commercially, like wall-painting,” says 21-year-old Mohit Chaurasia. After class XII he did a course on jewellery design and currently works for a jewellery firm.
He also does professional wall-paintings, rangolis, logos, calligraphy and he has now set his sights on learning sculpture. Mohit Chaurasia’s world has revolved around art for as long as he can remember, and after having to overcome the social stigma against not pursuing a mainstream career and battling financial constraints, he is currently living his dream. You can only take Mohit out of art, you can’t take the art out of Mohit.
The Mumbai resident is a part of a group of 55 artists called Rangoli Parivar who together create rangolis and are individually skilled in numerous art forms. He learnt the art of tattooing from Pramod Deshmukh — a member of the group, in all of 5 days and the very first tattoo that he did, that of a fish, was on his own leg, and with good reason, “I did not want to risk somebody else’s skin as doing tattoos are a little risky.” He doesn’t have his own tattoo studio, not yet anyway, but gets a whole lot of tattoo requests — many of them from previous customers. He proudly reveals how some of his faithful customers come from far — one even from New York — only to get tattoos done by him. He estimates that he has etched a staggering 7,000 tattoos until now.
When he had told his parents of his aspiration to be a tattooist, they were unable to support him due to financial constraints. He managed to learn it on his own and is very proud of the fact. “Now, I’ve bought a bike and a phone with my own money. My parents are really happy. I recently bought some gold jewellery for my mother,” he says proudly. For two months, he has been working as a jewellery designer for Nisha Jewels in Mumbai, and before that he was pursuing multiple avenues — including coaching school students for a foundation course in art on weekends.
While having a regular job is certainly good for the stability it brings, it also has a flip side. “Nowadays I’m forced to turn down more than half the requests I get as I’m busy with the job,” he rues. He’s chosen to focus on jewellery design as he says it offers very lucrative opportunities.
So what does it take for someone to become a tattoo artist? Mohit says, apart from being skilled in sketching, the most important thing is to have a ‘free hand’. “If I don’t touch a pencil for five days then my hand gets stiff. You need to control the tattoo machine in spite of its vibrations. There are seven layers of our skin and the needle should penetrate only three, so a lot of control and judgement is needed,” he says.
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