Inky skin-deep fad beats a retreat:

Taboo for the blooming tattoo

Gaston de ROSAYRO

Just the other day I was late for a book launch at a Colombo convention centre. Not that it would have mattered in normal circumstances. I mean if I were simply an invited guest I could have taken my time and sidled into the hall largely unnoticed. Then I could have eased myself into a back aisle seat with no one being the wiser. As my hateful detractors would quip that would have given the padded part of my anatomy where my brain is located a deserving rest.

But these were not normal circumstances for the simple reason that I had been dragooned to preside at the event. That is why I was compelled to leap out of the moving vehicle and take a leaf from the old Johnny Horton ‘Sink the Bismarc’ lyrics: “We hit the deck a runnin’ and we spun those guns around.” Actually it was a bevy of young girls I had to spin around or rather barge through as I hit the steep flight of steps a runnin’.

I yelled breathlessly : “Gangway girls! I’ve got to reach the mike in time before the Kandyan drummers beat out their not-too-gentle tattoo.” Tattoo, dear reader, was the key word in those spacious surroundings. Even in that desperate situation as I bolted up the stairway with the speed and agility of a mountain goat I was assailed by the sound and images of tattoos everywhere.

The heraldic percussionists were tuning up for their tattoo that would soon reach a crescendo and there gliding towards the auditorium was this gaggle of girls with earphones to help their sprightly steps and they were all covered in tattoos. Even on the run I was hit with the sudden realisation that in about 40-years-time we would be witnessing thousands of old ladies running around with permanent tattoos plastered all over their hides!

Tattoos are how the new generation expresses its individuality, which is why they all have one or more. I have got nothing against tattoos. They have been used for centuries to identify which sailors on a particular ship got drunk the night before. But at least those sailors, upon awakening and seeing the name Lulu Loolla inked into their shoulders, would have had the satisfaction of being able to say, “Who the heck is Lulu Loolla?”

A Sri Lankan merchant seaman once told me that he had been granted shore leave while his ship had been docked in an unfamiliar port. He was intrigued by the island and had been making all-night whopee with his crew mates. Waking up with a monumental hangover he had observed a strange ink mark on his sore chest.

He took immediate offence at the strange word ‘SULAWESI’ emblazoned across his chest. It took a heck of a lot of explaining before he was convinced that while in his drunken stupor the tattooist had decided to give his hometown a bit of tourist promotion. Sulawesi is the name of a tropical Indonesian island resort and is not an offensive term in the Indonesian language.

The grandkids in my family are not sailors, although some of them can out-swear the seafarers and be far more eloquently expressive in profanity.

But again they are all of the generation that is determined to do to their own flesh what the Tsunami did to our coastline. And it is tough to talk them out of it. “You don’t need to draw permanent lines in your skin,” I’ve told them. “Believe me, age will do it for you.

“To bolster my argument I usually say: “It runs in the family, dearie. Look at your Grand Aunt Bola Wathie. In 40 or 50 years time you are going to look like her.” But, like drunk sailors and bored felons they will not be deterred.

Grandson Kingsley’s back has complicated geometrics inked into it. It looks as if space aliens have been making crop circles, but he insists they are birthmarks.

They may look weird but they sure beat those ‘Mother,’ and ‘Amma’ tattoos with a dagger through a heart crowned with thorns ... right, Sailor?

My cousin Villie, however does not take a liberal view of the tattoo trend as I do. She is vehemently opposed to it and says: “I will certainly be happy to see this stupid fad of tattoos pass. I’ve always regarded them as hideous, not to mention stupid and even dangerous if applied under unsanitary conditions. There is a reason why they are called ‘tramp stamps’. Seeing one on the lower back of an otherwise beautiful 19-year old girl is something that makes me want to cry.”

So we are all frustrated: How do you explain to these children that they take their skin for granted . That it is just there, covering your body, until one day it starts developing little marks and creases on its own, like an old wallet wearing out.

Okay girlio, that butterfly tattoo looks great on your chest when you’re twenty or thirty. But when you get to seventy, it will be stretching into a swooping wing-spread eagle. And you too Tharindu, go ahead and get that tattoo of barbed wire when you are 18. But by the time you’re 80, it will be a picket fence.

It was only the other day that Keshi, 13, came up to me flashing her charming smile: “Hi Dada, you look great today. Can I get a tattoo?”

I gasped for breath. “A tattoo!” Keshi answered with conviction: “Yes. I’d like a tattoo of a little yellow rose right above my bikini bottom.”

I shook my head emphatically: “No!” But I knew Keshi was not convinced. I realise that what young girls don’t understand is that with time and gravity that little yellow rose will bloom and grow into a giant sunflower !