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.)