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Mehndi is temporary henna body art that stains skin brown for days and marks weddings across South Asia
Mehndi is a temporary decoration of the skin made from a paste of henna, a plant dye. It is widely practised across the Indian subcontinent, where it is applied to hands, wrists, forearms, feet and lower legs during weddings, religious festivals and family ceremonies. South Asian designs use small, intricate lines and patterns, while Middle Eastern designs tend toward florals and North African designs toward simple geometry. In the West it is commonly called a henna tattoo. Brown is the standard colour, though white, red, black and gold are sometimes used.
The henna paste is applied to the skin and left to dry, then the dye molecules bind to the keratin in the outer skin layer. The stain builds up over hours and gradually fades as the skin naturally sheds, usually over one to three weeks.
Mehndi shows how a plant-based tradition can be tied to rites of passage and still spread across cultures and continents. Its regional styles differ widely, and it is also used to colour hair and beards and to decorate scalps for people experiencing hair loss.
Henna's brown colour comes from lawsone, a natural dye molecule that binds to the proteins in skin and hair.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · text CC BY-SA 4.0
Photo: AmanAgrahari01, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
