For those who knows my RED obsession...
Walking to Mumbai I found lots of "Men in Red"; this think intrigued me, so.....
An age old solution to the greying problems across India is mehendi. The use of mehendi is described in the earliest Vedic ritual books. The leaves of the mehendi (botanic name lawsonia inermis) plant are crushed into a paste and applied to colour the greying strands to a deep shade of red. The shades of the coloured hair vary in various degrees of red from sangria, carmine, burgundy, persimmon to a bright orange. So it is not uncommon to came across a fully bearded man with a serious wrinkled expression and a flaming orange beard! Or women fashioning the most outrageous shades of red hair. Mehendi is a cultural trend since ancient India, much before the cosmetic brands started with chemical dyes, Indians had found the mehendi.
Text: Lubna Yusuf
Photo: Stefano Stranges
