Essi­ba Small

Hold­ing a hen­na cone in her hand, just as one would a pen­cil, Risa Raghu­nanan drew a sun­flower on my left hand. To the sim­ple, but well de­tailed flower, she added dots, then around the dots, swirls, then se­mi cir­cles with mi­ni curls on their backs. And, af­ter about eight min­utes, my first mehn­di was com­plet­ed. What start­ed out as a flower in the cen­tre of my hand had spread down to my fin­gers in dark green. When it was close to dry­ing, she pat­ted on a sug­ar and wa­ter so­lu­tion she mixed.

Or­di­nar­i­ly, she said, you add lemon to the mix­ture. When com­bined, the so­lu­tion helps to stain the skin bet­ter. She ex­plained that af­ter an hour the green, dark green paste would flake off, giv­ing way to a light or­ange. "By to­mor­row morn­ing the or­ange pat­tern would get dark­er–like a burnt or­ange." Raghu­nanan laughed as I oohed and ah­hed over her free­hand mas­ter­piece.

"You see what you do­ing there, that is what gives me the mo­ti­va­tion to do this job," she said with a laugh. For the past two years Raghu­nanan has been do­ing mehn­di (the art or prac­tice of paint­ing elab­o­rate pat­terns on the skin with hen­na) trad­ing un­der the name Risa's Ex­ot­ic Mehn­di Art. But she would tell any­one that her love for draw­ing pat­terns re­al­ly start­ed with the doo­dles she put on her hands in pen as a stu­dent of the Lak­sh­mi Girls' High School.

"I used to take a pen and draw things on my hands. Some­times I drew flow­ers, vines, leaves, the name of a guy I liked ...any­thing that came to mind."

The oth­er girls in Raghu­nanan's class ad­mired her work so much that they start­ed ask­ing her to draw pat­terns on their hands. Raghu­nanan be­came aware of mehn­di from her art teacher, who was from In­dia. "She used to put hen­na on her hands. She was the one who told me to buy the hen­na pow­der and showed me how to mix it and ap­ply it. "I re­mem­ber beg­ging my mom to buy me the pow­der just so I could try it."

Raghu­nanan dis­cov­ered the hen­na cone at the store where she bought the pow­der, so she bought a few. Af­ter leav­ing school, Raghu­nanan start­ed do­ing mehn­di for friends and fam­i­ly. "It was hard at first us­ing the cone and it took a lot of prac­tice.

"Then I up­grad­ed to the jacquard bot­tles which have fine met­al tips for a bet­ter ap­pli­ca­tion of the hen­na." With word of mouth ad­ver­tis­ing from one friend to the next, the 24-year-old Freeport mom of one soon built up a clien­tele. Her on­ly prob­lem? She was do­ing all the work for free in her spare time away from her full time job. Af­ter spend­ing a Di­vali do­ing com­pli­men­ta­ry mehn­di for friends and fam­i­ly, Raghu­nanan's fa­ther took note of the vol­ume of work his daugh­ter did for peo­ple and the amount of mon­ey she spent on prod­ucts and put her to sit down.

"He told me that it was time that I start­ed to get pay for my work and that I should take my busi­ness se­ri­ous­ly. "That's dad­dy, al­ways look­ing af­ter my in­ter­est." When a dif­fi­cult preg­nan­cy put her on bed rest, Raghu­nanan fi­nal­ly took her fa­ther's ad­vice. Her clients now in­clude main­ly Hin­du brides and mem­bers of their bridal par­ty, friends and peo­ple who have seen her work on Face­book. She gets plea­sure out of do­ing mehn­di, she con­fessed."It's like ic­ing a cake," she said with a gig­gle.

"The re­ac­tion of the peo­ple while I work and see­ing the de­signs come alive and take shape make it ex­tra spe­cial." In­spi­ra­tion for de­signs usu­al­ly comes from Raghu­nanan's head. "You wouldn't be­lieve how many pop in­to my head. Even while I sleep. "I just com­mit them to mem­o­ry and use them when asked for a de­sign." Usu­al­ly, she said, she al­lows her clients to pick their own pat­terns and bring them to her.

"I may give my opin­ions but I don't dic­tate to peo­ple what they should do." Raghu­nanan's prices vary and start from $20. "It re­al­ly de­pends on the pat­tern. You will pay more if the pat­tern is in­tri­cate."

The mehn­di on a Hin­du bride starts at the fin­ger tips and move up to the el­bow. "When I am work­ing on clients I try to do per­fect work so I take my time do­ing it. If I make a mis­take I quick­ly erase it with the tip." De­pend­ing on how well the wear­er takes care of it, mehn­di can last up to four weeks. Un­like some artists, Raghu­nanan re­fus­es to use black hen­na on her clients. "From what I have read about it, it is dan­ger­ous to the skin." Raghu­nanan was thank­ful to her sig­nif­i­cant oth­er Andy for his sup­port of her busi­ness. When she lost her job af­ter hav­ing the ba­by, he was the one who de­signed and print­ed her busi­ness cards. To­geth­er they do re­search on the art and pe­ruse Web sites for de­sign ideas. The Tal­paro born Raghu­nanan wants to one day form a group of hen­na artists in this coun­try so that they could meet each oth­er, show off their craft and host work­shops." "It would al­so be nice if I get a call to do mehn­di in a part of a coun­try and I am booked, to re­fer my client to some oth­er artist in the group. That way I spread out the work."

The self taught artist, who has re­cent­ly start­ed do­ing tem­po­rary tat­toos, is al­so cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing Ac­counts. At the time of our in­ter­view she was mak­ing prepa­ra­tions to fly to To­ba­go to do work for a bride as part of an on­go­ing arrange­ment for a com­pa­ny.

"Do­ing this job has been a pas­sion for a long time. I want to con­tin­ue grow­ing in it." Risa can be con­tact­ed via Face­book–Risa ex­ot­ic mehn­di art or call 312-5239.