152. VEILED VERMILLION
The facial mutilation
of the attractive Apatani women, in the days of yore, was the circumstantial
compulsion to discourage Nyshi warriors from forcefully taking them away. Similarly,
during the Burmese invasion, pretty women smeared their faces with ash to
protect themselves.
The use of tilak and regha by men and sindoor and
bindi by women in India since ages
old was more to dissuade hypnotisers and face-readers.
The wearing of sindoor and bindi is
more a cultural phenomenon than a religious one. And the Indian woman looks
best with her red bindi and sindoor. No other fashion statement can
beat the Indian woman’s rich intricately designed ensemble, not to forget, the
fiery red vermillion and bindi, which sets her apart from the rest
of the crowd.
This bindi fascination has been with me since
I was a little girl. I have loved wearing traditional clothes and my colourful bindis to go with them. Red being an all
time favourite with me, I feel my ensemble is complete when a round, oval, a
mere dot, crystal, an intricately done with thread or just a mere black line
with small leaves drawn with an eyeliner bindi sticks between my two
not-so-shapely-brows, starts a conversation with whoever I meet.
Well,
talking about conversation, a couple of years I had quite a bit of gaggle
following me around and wondering wide-eyed about my bindi and sindoor. Yes, you heard me right; sindoor! I have always had this
fascination for women who have had this ornately done up line of red vermillion,
right through the middle of their neatly parted hair. Beautiful may be too
miniscule a word to describe the exquisite ornament on the Indian woman’s
forehead.
To satiate
this desire, I have had endless opportunities on stage to overtly decorate the
parting in the middle of my head. In one play, when the director saw me, he had
the most perplexed look on his face, “Tina, I am not quite sure if the
character you are playing needs so much vermillion. A mere scratch will do.” I
however, talked him around saying the audience at the end of the hall might not
see the red line and might be confused about my marital status in the play. He
decided not to argue with a ‘crazy’ woman and spoil the show!
Going back
to the gossip about my sindoor, on one of my compering sessions at
the Rabindra Bhawan, I decided that I would wear just a wee bit of vermillion
to complement my mekhela sador and bindi. As I walked into
the hall, the people who usually talk to me, raised an eyebrow and curiously smiled.
Instead of looking straight at me, they constantly shifted their eyes to the
vermillion. It amused me no end.
On the same
day, during a meeting, more than being interested in what the speakers were
emoting, people, especially the women, kept nudging each other, slyly looking
at me once in a while. I was however enjoying the histrionics. The men, however,
were nonchalant, preferring to manage a stoic countenance even if they did have
some ‘horrific’ or ‘disbelieving’ thoughts cooking in their not-so-pious-minds.
One lady shrilly asked me, “Hey Tina, when did you get married?” I smiled back
and told her, “Oh several years now, baidew.
You didn’t know?” “No, I didn’t! I have seen you wearing sindoor only today!”
However, I
was numbed to a statue, when a lady rechristened to Islam by law against the
wishes of her family, but which didn’t make much of a difference now, came up
to me, with the most emotional face I had ever seen. She stood in front of me and
stared at the vermillion on my head for several uncomfortable seconds, while
she held my shoulders with both hands endearingly. “You know what,” she started
saying. “You are looking beautiful with this red sindoor.” I smiled. Though I
was shifting in the place where I was standing, I preferred to feel the
emotions coursing through this dejected lady. “I never had a chance to wear the
vermillion. I so wished to wear it too.” Till the time we sighed together and
managed to give each other a bleak smile, everything seemed fine. The
conversation that followed left me desperately wondering what to do next. The
lady’s fingers dug tighter around my shoulders as she pulled me closer and
whispered, “Oh, I am so sad for you. I heard a while ago that your husband
passed away and you are now married to a Hindu man.”
“Oh
goodness, baidew. That’s not true at
all.”
“Then, why
the vermillion?”
“Oh, this
was just to complement my ensemble, that’s all.”
I rolled my
eyes upwards and pretended to faint. Both of us laughed out loud.
(Writing in the Hadith goes this way! Prophet
Muhammad (PBUH) in one of his several meetings, noticed that one of his
followers was wearing an outfit, which had a combination of red and yellow. The
Prophet commenting about the colour red asked, “What is this colour you are
wearing?” The faithful disciple, scared that he might have hurt the Prophet,
returned home and burnt up his clothes. The next day when The Prophet found him
in a different set of clothes, asked him, “Where are your clothes?” The man said
he had burnt it as he felt he might have hurt The Prophet.
“You
shouldn’t have done this. You could have given away your clothes to one of the
ladies in the house to wear.”
The
Prophet was never against the colour red. He however preferred the men to wear
any other colour apart from red but never passed a doctrine that the women
could not wear red.)
(*Ref.
To Abu Dawood Hadith 4057. Narrated by Abdullah Ibne Amr Ibne Al As.)
