It all started as a hobby. Simy Ramnauth is 29 and she has been putting mehendi, a paste based on plants and various spices used to draw floral designs, on her own and her friends’ hands since she was thirteen.

“I used to watch Indian movies where all women put mehendi on their hands. I found it beautiful and wanted to try and do it by myself.” She never learnt it from anyone but owes her success to her own perseverance. “You know, when you like doing something, it comes by itself.”

Simy is quite well-known in the ‘business’ now: she puts mehendi on women’s hands on their wedding day. “There is no real religious meaning in putting on mehendi. It is much more a tradition for Hindus and Tamils. For Muslims, however, it has more meaning: there are religious rites on the day the future bride puts on her mehendi,” Simy explains.

The young lady works in a shop specialising in sarees and salwar kumiz in Quatre-Bornes during the week and runs her mehendi business at the week-end. Her full-time job as a salesgirl brings her more customers as she can offer them her know-how when they come to the shop.

“I do not only have Mauritian customers for weddings. Recently I had customers from England or Reunion who wanted to try. They found it very nice.”

Actually, Simy does not seem to focus only on the traditional side of mehendi; she is conscious that it has to do with fashion and she often puts mehendi on “youngsters who prefer mehendi to a tattoo as it is removable and they can change the design as often as they want.”

If it has become trendy today, “mehendi already existed at the time of Jesus Christ.” Simy relates that, when the original plant, which gives the paste, reached India, Hindus and Muslims realized that it could be used for weddings and other celebrations. This is how the tradition was born. She also explains that the plant can be crushed and used to heal wounds.

When she started to use mehendi, she remembers that it was much more difficult. There was no machine and no one to make the paste for us; we had to crush it ourselves on the ‘roche curry’. It was far from soft and we had to apply it with a stick. The designs were not as fine as they are now. “Moreover, putting on mehendi is much easier now with the cone. All you need is a lot of patience.”