When my mother noticed a pink crocodile, simultaneously soft and menacing, tattooed onto my left arm, she let out a deep, disappointed sigh. "This is the last nail in the coffin.
First you wore skirts to events and we let it slide. Then you wore heels. Now this? What's next, a septum piercing?" It's not that my devout Muslim mother cannot bear the sight of a tattoo simply because she is conservative and religious.
The way she looks at it, a tattoo is also a recipe for trouble, calling attention to her queer son in a world where it's safer for him to minimise himself and go through life undetected. Only when I assured her that the ink would fade in a few days to once again reveal unblemished skin did her frown fade.
If you grew up in India in the '90s, begging your parents for a couple of bucks to buy Boomer or Fusen bubble gum just so you could cop a temporary tattoo was a rite of passage. We may have been too young to make a case for permanent ink back then, but temporary tattoos of G.I.
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