Transmogrification

This simple looking old man in the picture is a tattoo artist. India have had a history of tattoo making, I learned this from my Grandmother. She used to tell me that women in her time used to get tattooed not for a style statement, but to secure their identities. In her time there was a big insecurity of forced conversion from one religion to the other. So women used to get their names tattooed on their hands. Writing a name with too simple a font, requires no or some aesthetic qualities.

Now the purpose of getting a tattoo has changed tremendously, and demands trendiness. This old, simple looking tattoo artist belongs to the period of my Grandmother. But I was amazed to see the transmogrification he was able to pull off, and that too in such an age. He had all trendy designs under his little roadside setup; from tribal to celtic font tattoos. I was thinking from where did the motivation came, to learn, when learning becomes more and more difficult as you start growing older and older. There was a whisper in the winds there, that 'with life; possibilities are endless'.

A picturesque or personification of an ingenious tattoo artist in this modern era is that of a long haired, immensely tattooed, immensely pierced individual. It is now the era of 'Judging a book by it's cover'. In such an era; this old, simple looking tattoo artist compels us to believe in those anachronistic lines 'Never Judge A Book By It's Cover'.