Hindu Customs and Traditions

This week is a busy week. Many hindu customs and traditions as we prepare for a cousins wedding this weekend.

I am also busy in the art world as always which I love.Am preparing and training to start business of Mehandi (Henna)which is Indian body painting. Along with that we will be offering facials, makeovers,nails, pedicure, and more. My cousin Anoushka and I will be doing this together. So I started marketing a bit online as well this week.

Another artist also saw a short film I did of my daughter and suggests I start marketing making short films for other that would like to order one. Artists or others as gifts for people. He told me he will help get my name out the also for this. He really loves my talent of doing this. Must run in the family a bit having an eye for film as my cousin works for NBC as a production mixer and in the film industry. He also does a bit of acting.

Back to customs and traditions. Last night my cousin applied mehandi (henna) to one of my legs. Henna (Lawsonia inermis, also called mignonette tree[1]) is a flowering plant used since antiquity to dye skin, hair, fingernails, leather and wool. The name is also used for dye preparations derived from the plant, and for the art of temporary tattooing based on those dyes. enna is a tall shrub or small tree, 2.6 m high. It is glabrous, multibranched with spine tipped branchlets. Leaves are opposite, entire, glabrous, sub-sessile, elliptical, and broadly lanceolate (1.5–5.0 cm x 0.5–2 cm), acuminate, having depressed veins on the dorsal surface. Henna flowers have four sepals and a 2 mm calyx tube with 3 mm spread lobes. Petals are obvate, white or red stamens inserted in pairs on the rim of the calyx tube. Ovary is four celled, style up to 5 mm long and erect. Fruits are small, brownish capsules, 4–8 mm in diameter, with 32–49 seeds per fruit, and open irregularly into four splits.

This is my mehendi (henna) so far on one hand.

Yesterday I went to my other cousins whom is a seamstress and alters all my clothing. She is currently sewing two blouses in which I will wear with my sarees. She needed to make certain for any alterations. For Monday she lent me a beautiful black churi dal to wear.

A new day and my mehandi is complete now. Now this morning t finish tea and writing then a bit of yoga. After that I will move on to sewing hair extensions into my cousin Anoushka's hair.