#297 Mendhi Night

Ravia traces how Mendhi moves from a humble desert plant to one of the most meaningful wedding rituals across South Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, and the diaspora in Canada. I also dig into what modern Mendhi nights look like now, and what respect and safety should mean when henna goes global. 

• The rise of new wedding add-ons like Y2K parties and what that says about changing culture 
• What henna is, how lawsone stains skin, and why the plant lasts for weeks 
• Henna’s history from ancient Egypt to the Indian subcontinent and beyond 
• How trade routes, religion, and migration spread henna across continents 
• What a South Asian Mendhi night looks like, from timing to paste ingredients to hidden initials 
• The meaning of songs, grief, joy, and a women-centred space 
• Regional styles like Moroccan geometric patterns and Gulf Khaleeji designs 
• Modernization through Instagram trends, Pinterest aesthetics, and professional wedding industries 
• Appreciation versus appropriation, plus the dangers of PPD “black henna” 


Tune in weekly on Mondays & Thursdays to TURN it up with Ravia on 97.9 FM or live-stream at www.theuniversalradio.com

IG: @theuniversalradio

Transcript

Welcome Back And Wedding Recap

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome back to the Universal Radio Network Podcast. This is DJ Rara Ravia, and today I get to talk to you about South Asian weddings and the Mendy Party. Keep turning it up with me right here on the Universal Radio Network. And guess what? I bring back my South Asian wedding series. So let's do a recap on what I have already talked about. I have gone into a little bit of what are the expectations around weddings? Where do South Asian weddings like how have they become so big? How do they get to be modernized now? So I did a whole segment on what is a buckra party. And fun fact, I've been talking to a few people about what is a buccra party, and a few people told me they have been invited to Y2K parties. This is a new thing that's happening in the Soy BC area in the lower mainline. So why am I asked questioning, how is culture being changed? And as your, you know, cultural researcher girly on the air waves and in your podcasts, I think I'm gonna look into that too because why are multiple people being invited to Y2K parties? And this person I was talking to actually asked me, like, do you know what it's about? And they were like, Yeah, I they like I was like, I don't know actually. And then they said, Yeah, I asked the bride and groom, and they were like, Yeah, we don't know either. It's just fun, just like wear a Y2K outfit. And I was like, This person was born after the year 2000. It's like the funniest, like, I don't know, I always have to think about where these traditions come from, what's happening. Do we just want to party? Is this gonna become something our grandchildren will be like, my grandpa did this at his wedding, so I have to do it? I don't know. What do I think? Let me know at DJ R A Ravia on Instagram. But welcome back to

Inside The Mendhi Party Vibe

SPEAKER_00 2:05

97.9 FM. Tonight I will get to talk to you about Mendy parties or henna parties. And the fun thing about talking about Mendy or henna is it's not just in South Asia, it's in the Middle East, it's in Africa, it is around the world, and I think it's like really beautiful that it is a part of weddings internationally. So if you've ever attended a Mendha Mendhi party or a henna party, whatever you may refer to it as, it's an event, and there's usually music, dancing, color, laughter, and that smell, that rich smell. It it's it's a little bit of a polarizing smell. I love it. I think it smells very earthy. I know people that cannot stand it and don't put on put it on. Like I love, like I love that smell. I love everything about Mendia or henna. It's fun, and it's often usually a women's only event. We'll get a little bit more into that later today. But before we get into like the

Henna Plant, Stain, And Science

SPEAKER_00 3:00

dancing and the celebration of it all, let's start at the very beginning. What is henna exactly? Where does it come from? How did this plant, because it's a plant that gets ground up and turned into a paste, how would it end up being part of wedding traditions in Morocco, in Dili, in like Egypt? I'm going to a wedding in Cairo that'll have this in the fall. Um, there is a bunch of them in Calgary, like uh in Ethiopia, Eritrea, like all these countries use this plant, La Sonia Enermis, which is a flowering shrub that thrives in hot and arid climates. You'll find it glow growing wild in North Africa, Middle East, South Asia, and parts of Southeast Asia. And the plant itself can grow between two to six meters tall. It has these small white and pink flowers that are actually quite fragrant and are also used for perfume making. So, you know, shout out to the henna plant. Like, really, it's giving us a lot. So when the leaves are dried of this plant, they are grounding to a fine powder and they release a component called lawsone, a reddish-orange molecule that bonds chemically with the keratin proteins in our skin, nails, and hair. And that's why henna stains. It doesn't just sit on the surface, it actually goes into the outer layers of the skin, which is why when well-applied henna design can last from anywhere from one to three weeks. Which is a long time. So, where when did this all start? When did people start using this plant to dye their skin? Researchers and ethnobotanists have documented henna's use stretching back thousands of years. Archaeological evidence suggests henna was used in ancient Egypt. Some Egyptian mummies have been found with henna nails or hair. Ancient texts from the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, and North Africa all reference this plant and its remarkable dyeing properties, as well as its cooling properties. So you have this humble shrub growing in the desert. The people across cultures, across the world, across time have looked at it and they see something that's like really special about it, right? It's cool. You can paint yourself with it. It's fun. This impulse to mark your body with a meaningful life moment, at this meaningful life moment with this dye, is it feels really human to me, and I think it's really beautiful. So that impulse is alive and well as we are tracing henna's journey from like the ancient Egypt onwards. But we have established that it is a plant, and while it has this extraordinary capacity to leave its mark, how did it go from the North African, Middle Eastern, South Asian continents and end up in like all these countries? It's it's fascinating to see how it's traveled. So, how it's gone this far is through trade, religion, culture, and the movement of people. So obviously, I talk about diaspora. We are a South Asian radio station in Edmonton. We focus on diaspora. This is one of those things that travels with us. Scholars who studied the spread of henna point to ancient trade routes, particularly the Silk Road. Yes, the Grand Trunk Road, one of those GT Road. Did you know that's what Grand Trunk Road stands for? That's the Silk Road and maritime spice routes, as primarily the spaces where henna was being spread. The plant and the knowledge of how it like traveled went by like merchants, pilgrims, soldiers, and migrants. So the first kind of spread of it is connected to the expansion of Islam across North Africa, Middle East, Central Asia, and eventually the Indian subcontinent from the 7th century CE onwards. In that time, henna traveled with it. There's actually a religious text, a hadith from Prophet Muhammad, that is cited in Islamic context. It's reports reportedly endorsed henna use, particularly for women. Whether or not the specific tradition is taken as prescriptive or like cultural association with henna and Islamic practice helped embed it deeply in the wedding and celebrate celebratory customs of Muslim communities across the world. So that's why we see it from everywhere from Morocco to Malaysia. So it didn't just spread through Islam though, it spread through other cultures. The Indian subcontinent, henna, also called Mendi in Hindi and Urtu, has roots in Hindu traditions as well. Ancient Sanskrit texts reference the use of the plant-based body decoration, and by mid the medieval period, Mendi was well established as a wedding tradition across much of the subcontinent, cutting across religious lines. So Hindu brides, Muslim brides, Sikh brides all incorporated henna into their pre-wedding rituals. Their like specific customs sometimes like differed depending on where you were living, uh what community you were from, maybe the temperature, like you know, if you're in the mountains, it looked a little different. The designs were a little bit different, but they were all using Mendi before they got married. By the time of the Mughal Empire, which ruled much of South Asia from the 16th to the mid-19th century, Mendhi became this like courtly art, right? Like so Mughal paintings depict women with really intricately decorated hands. Mughal courts are credited to like elevating the Mendhi from a dying practice to this refined aesthetic tradition, still like seeing those like delicate, like lacy, geometric, and floral patterns that we now associate with bridal Mendy are supposedly having their roots based in royalty in the Mughal Empire. Simultaneously,

How Henna Traveled Across Empires

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like I said, it's an inter it's Mr. Worldwide. Mendi is Mr. Worldwide. That's what I gotta say. Simultaneously, in North Africa and the Middle East, Henan is developing its own artistic tradition. So Moroccan henna is characterized by like geometric and like linear patterns, and it looks quite different from the dense floral style uh that we see in like South Asia. And Yemeni, Gulf, and Egyptian traditions have their own kind of visual signatures, and the diversity of henna's traditions reflect the cultures and the landscapes around it. So let's talk about like the colonialism diaspora as South Asian, North African, and Middle Eastern communities moved, some choice, some by choice, some by force necessity, they carried their Mendy or Henna traditions with them. So from East Africa to the Caribbean to the United Kingdom to Canada. And today Edmonton has like, you know, such a vibrant South Asian community, and with it we have a lot of mendy parties, mendy artists, guest mendies, and like you know, we get to dive deep into that today because it is something that we see alive and well in our culture. And one of the questions I'm asking is how did it become such a distinct celebration that it is today? And what does it even look like? So if you haven't been to one, like it's usually an afternoon or evening event, sometimes it's called mendi rat, mendi night, mendikirasam, ritu, which means mendi ritual, and it's a ceremony held, usually two to three days before a wedding. Uh, because the mendi, when you actually get the stain on your hands, it usually takes two to three days to get to its full darkness, and often it is applied to guests' hands um and the bride's hands and feet. And I think like getting wedding guest mendhi is fairly a new tradition. I remember being younger and it not really being a thing. Maybe it's it was just expensive and now people have money, or it just like now it's like unmarried people are allowed to do more things now, because that was also a cultural shift. Because back in the day, unmarried girls were usually not getting their Mendhi done if they were going to a wedding. But yeah, the the thing is usually the Mendhi night is usually three nights before the wedding day itself, and the Mendhi ceremony has ancient roots in South Asian wedding traditions. So, like ethnographers and folklorists have documented Mendhi rituals across the Indian subcontinent for centuries, and in many communities, a Mendi ceremony is traditionally a women-only gathering, which is usually just at home where women will sing wedding songs, usually like geet or tappe, and apply henna to the bride, and usually it was at night, and they prepare her emotionally and spiritually for the life change ahead, which I think is beautiful. I love the Mendy party, it's usually one of my favorite days, it's when you just start catching up with everyone, and it's really intimate, so you actually get to talk to a lot of people. So the rituals of Mendy application and the styles they vary from region, from area, even like from artist to artist in different cities. In some traditions, the bride's Mendy paste is prepared with special ingredients like rose water, eucalyptus oil, lemon juice, and sugar. And yes, they do smell as delicious as they sound. Each of those ingredients have a symbolic significance and also are said to help, you know, improve the stain. In some Rajasthani traditions, the henna paste is mixed with fragrant herbs and applied communally, like so you smell good for your wedding day. Like that's great. I like this. We're all thinking ahead here. In Pakistani Punjabi traditions, the groom's family traditionally sends the Mendi to the bride's home as a gift. It's called like Mendi Bijna, Bijna, symbolizing a formal connection between the two families, which is really sweet. You know, you're getting getting the bride ready and everyone's involved with it. There's also a widely known custom in which the initials of the or the name of the groom are hidden within the elaborate like patterns that are designed on the bride's hands. On the wedding night, the groom is supposed to find his name among the intricate swirls and flowers and all of those like cutesy images. So it is a pretty playful and intimate tradition that underscores like the symbolic weight of Mendy as like a marker of walking into your wedding life and also just like helping maybe being an icebreaker for you and your husband if you you know if you're having an arranged marriage and it's the first time meeting him. I don't know, maybe that's why they started doing that. The colour on Mundi is also very symbolic. So in South Passian tradition, so by a color, I mean the stain. So how dark it stains is actually really symbolic. The darker the stain, the more auspicious or like you know, it's special it becomes. It can be some people consider it like your madlana will love you more, or you'll have a long and happy marriage, or that might mean that your husband will love you more. There's I feel like people just pick and choose whatever they want, and they like are like, oh yeah, if you have a really good Mendy stain, it means your relationship is gonna be amazing. What like symbolic or not, people will take really good care of their Mendy to make sure it gets really dark. So I've seen this like tape that is applied on on Mendy so that it gets preserved overnight. So after it dries, very carefully it is uh like taped with this like surgical tape kind of look. You look like a little mummy and you go to sleep, and you carefully wrap your hands to preserve the moisture to deepen the stain. And there's even this whole, you know, try to get it the darkest color possible. You try to keep it as moist as possible, and for that, you often you are often applying this lemon sugar solution and sitting near like a warm lamp or you know, holding your hands over a warm stove to make sure that it gets really dark. Also, there is the tradition of like getting some cloves, warming them up, kind of like burning them a little bit and putting that getting the sake or the heat of those cloves onto your hands. First of all, it smells really good. Second of all, it like keeps you warm because Mendy is a cooling kind of herb and it does cool you off. And that's

Mendhi Night Rituals And Playful Customs

SPEAKER_00 14:50

also one of the things that Mendy is known for is in Ayurvedic traditions, it is known for its cooling properties and applying it to soothe the bride's nerves and to protect her from this like vulnerable transition period between her old life and her new one. It is like it's like she when she gets the Mendy applied, it's like she's walking through this threshold into a new life, which is which is really cool, and I'm really happy that there is something so significant that helps mark this tradition. So, around the application of henna and getting your mendy done, there is songs. There's mendi geith, there's tape, and if you've ever been to a traditional Mendy party, you can almost hear the sound of like the Dolki and the spoon hitting it on top. It is the music of its own tradition. It has its own art form. Like the Dolki party has its own vibe, like there's a lot of women hanging out, laughing, and honestly, like oh, it's a little bit of uh, you end up like finding a little bit of like a I want to say a rap battle, a diss track of other people. Like you'll sing little funny little songs about people, and it gets a little cheeky, which is fun. Across the Indian subcontinent, the singing of wedding songs is a women's practice for centuries. Sometimes women of the family, sometimes women from outside the family, and scholars of South Asian music and gender have documented that these oral traditions are extensively happening in almost all communities. Songs are passed from mother to daughter, granddaughter to you know, to like niece, aunt to niece across generations. In the Mendi ceremony, the songs serve so many functions. Like they are entertaining us, they're also instructing us, they are sometimes even like omens of a future, like, oh, when your mother-in-law treats you like this, here's what I can do. And sometimes it's a little bit tongue in cheek, like, yeah, just beat her up. Don't do that. You know, we're not condoning violence, but sometimes that is what they are saying. And more often than not, these songs are very like celebratory, they're very exciting. And what really gets me sad is many of these traditional Mendy songs are like bittersweet because they address the bride directly, like as a bunno, as a daughter who is leaving her parents' home to a new family. As we know, as I've talked about before, South Asian weddings are very patriarchal. They are very much about having this daughter as a person who leaves your home and lives in someone else's home. And in that home, she is beginning a new life and she is no longer yours. There are songs that speak to the bride's longing of her childhood home. She speaks to Bobble, which is often her like father, um, and gratitude for her parents, and also this naivety of like the uncertainty that her future holds. These songs are not like just you know celebrate celebratory. They're very complex, and I feel like I've seen a lot of people cry and they hold this like grief that exists alongside the celebration, especially when you are part of the family that is giving a daughter away. Now, I think these like traditions have reshaped and not become so much of giving a daughter away, whereas understanding that the daughter and the son of whoever's family or the son's all, you know, whoever is getting married, they are now creating their own family. Two families are joining. These are things that I think are happening. At the same time, the emotional kind of heaviness and complexity of these songs are still are still very powerful because a lot of women, despite how we like try to change our culture and how we try to like, you know, have this have this change for us, they it it sometimes just happens to you. Sometimes these things just happen to you. So those mendiket are are very powerful and they're sung by women, which is special, and usually using the tolki, which is a small hand drum and sometimes a harmonium. And so that's a little bit about the music around it. But let's talk about how Hannah Ormendi has moved across cultures and I already sat in places like Morocco, across the Middle East, in North Africa, which is what Morocco is. So I've been focused a lot on like the South Asian henna traditions, but Hannah Ormendi is not just from South Asia. We are gonna look at how, even in our own diverse community in Edmonton, like there are a number of different types of Hannah Startis, uh, henna artists and styles that you can find. So let's start in North Africa. I talked to my good friend Shama about this. She is Moroccan and it's usually called henna or al-Henna, and the central knight is Layat al-Henna, which is the knight of henna, which is the equivalent of like a Mendirat in the South Asian context. And Moroccan henna typically is held the night before the wedding, and the bride wears a gaftan and is seated in like a central throne-like chair, and is like you know, surrounded by her friends, and there's also like candles and herbs, and her feet are decorated by a nekasha, a professional henna artist, while music plays and women sing, so there's a common thread between our cultures. So Moroccan henna also has more geometric patterns. She, my friend Shama, did say that the South Asian style has been pretty influential, and she sees that being like kind of something that she sees, right? Like the cultures are mixing, you go on Pinterest and you find things, you're like, I want this. But the traditional Moroccan henna styles have Berber-influenced patterns, which is the indigenous communities of Morocco, and the styles vary by region by in Morocco as well. So in Fez, henna looks different than it does in Marrakesh or in Casablanca, where my friend is from. And these regional differences within a single like country landmass speaks to how locally embedded these practices are. Let's go into the Arab Gulf. So in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, even Jordan, henna traditions are rich and distinct. So Jordan, I guess, would be 1110. But Kaliji henna, if we go to the Gulf, is as it's known, is characterized by large, bold, open patterns. So I've seen this a lot on Pinterest. So they are usually the more flowery, like swirly patterns, and there is they've become like, I think my inspo for a lot of the henna stuff that I'm finding. So Kaliji just means from the Gulf, and Kaliji brides sometimes requests South Asian style Mendy, and vice versa. So there we go. Cultural mixing. In East Africa, particularly in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea and Sudan, among Swahili communities in Kenya and Tanzania, henna is also deeply historical. In Somali tradition, it's called Xena, and applying it before a wedding is a significant communal event. And in Sudanese, the ceremony is called Jirtig, in which the bride is decorated with henna as a part of a melty day

Songs, Tears, And Women’s Space

SPEAKER_00 21:40

pre wedding celebrations, which is a lot like the South Asian celebrations that we have. So across our cultures, we see so much mixing. So let's get into the deeper meanings of Mendies. And let's go into the symbolic kind of weight of the tradition, because I think that's interesting. So I The most basic level, like it is a marker of tradition, right? A transition. It is like you are getting married, you are gonna wear this thing because you're different from all the other people at this event. So if we look at this anthropological way of studying the rites of passage, there's a framework laid out by Arnold Van Gennep in his landmark work, The Rites of Passage. Understanding the Mendi ceremony as a classic liminal ritual, a ceremony that marks and helps navigate the threshold between one social state and another. The bride is no longer a daughter in her parents' home. She is not yet a wife in her husband's home or her, you know, marital home. The Mendi knight exists in that threshold space where she is preparing for that. And that Mendi that is applied in her parental home, in her home, in her unmarried life, is gonna be the same Mendi she wears in that transition into her like her wedding, her married life. I think that's special. It's like you're taking this special mark, this temporary tattoo in a way, from your old life into your new life, and you can look at it and be like, huh, I put that on with my my people, you know. And the body decoration itself is deeply meaningful. So across many traditions, marking your body is is important, right? Like it is a good way to know that you are are like being marked in a way that changes that is like symbolic of this transition that you are going through. So while this, you know, like I said, it's a temporary tattoo, like all transition, it is temporary. The newness of it is gonna fade. And while that lat like, you know, that purpose of that is it declares her status as a bride, as a newlywed woman, and it also at the same time helps create this communal kinship dimension to the act of applying of Mendhi together with your friends, with your family. Like while it requires this patience and it demands this closeness, it demands this like need to slow down. There's always this Punjabi saying I always think of like they're like, Oh, Mendhi Lagia, like you can't do anything because you have Mendhi on. And it's like, yes, when you have Mendhian, you can't do anything because you have to sit there, you have to be fed, your friends have to take you to the bathroom. It's just you have to prepare for it and it really helps you just slow down. So it really helps your friends witness this transformation as you step into this new life. And I think it's really fun that the motifs in Mendy also carry a symbolic weight. So lotuses, roses are symbols of beauty, prosperity. The peacock is a symbol of love, paisleys, which originated in Persia and then goes through South Asia, symbolized fertility and abundance. The mango or the Buta is an oldest method, is a very old motif and is associated with prosperity and auspiciousness. And even those geometric patterns for Morocco and the North African and Middle East traditions carry meaning. So triangles protecting against the evil eye, interlocking patterns symbolizing the union of two families. So it is special. Banama's also a very gendered tradition. So when they have, as scholars have noted, and as I've seen in my own life, there are deeply gendered dimensions to Mendy. It is a space that is historically a women's space, a rare arena where women are able to like be themselves, hang out, and also express creativity, female knowledge, and like women, women's stories and connection are at the center of this. So the Mendy artist has traditionally been a woman, and her skin is highly valuable. The songs of Mendy are usually sung by women. And the knowledge of how to mix the paste or apply a lemon sugar solution to get the most ideal application is usually passed down, like knowledge that is passed down by women, women's networks, and their stories. So even as Mendhi Mendy has modernized and there are men doing Mendy, it has entered the profession that is historically associated with the women's space and women's knowledge remains culturally significant. All that to say, when we talk about Mendy traditions, there is also a fun tradition where the groom will get the bride's name on his hand, maybe a little heart, and that is just a little excitement of, you know, making sure that you know he's the groom. And sometimes the servala or the best man or the young man that walks aside beside the groom on the day of the wedding also gets a little bit of Mendy too. Do you get Mendy done at weddings if you're a guy? Let me

Instagram Weddings And Pro Henna Artists

SPEAKER_00 26:35

know because I think it's fun. I think it looks good. Alright, we're gonna talk a little bit more into the modernization of Mendy. So I talked a little bit about this earlier, where we see there is a change from the intimate event into this bigger event where there is lots of people, uh performances, and more of like a structured event, whereas a traditional Mendy party at home would often be the bride getting her mendy done and everyone else kind of hanging out, maybe get their mendy done too. But if you've attended a Mendy party in other, you know, other places, it was not like the traditional hangout space that it sometimes is. I don't sometimes it is, but I've seen examples of it where it's much bigger, louder, and more elaborate. So the modernization of the Mendy party has been driven by several forces. Like I feel like there's you know, growing people who have more access to money, we're able to like spend more money on this stuff. There's the rise of social media and like the Instagram wedding influence. You know, I've talked about this before. How much people spend on weddings, the aesthetic of weddings, having a booker party, all kind of can lead back to the Instagramming of weddings and the pinterstification of it all, you know. The influence of the Bollywood film industry and the emergence of a professional wedding industry catered specifically to South Asian clients has probably also made this be a more popular phenomenon. So sometimes a Mendy party is now held in a banquet hall or event venue catered by professionals, wrapped like performances, choreographed Mendy dance, where people, you know, will have weeks of rehearsals, professional choreographers and Bollywood songs to put together for this for this event, which is all very exciting. I hope you are enjoying our conversation about the modernization of Mendy, how it went from a living room event, essentially, something that you would do with your friends and hang out, to this luxury event that I've seen on Instagram. And I think that like the power of social media changing the way South Asian weddings have been done and performed is is definitely something that we can like look deeper into. Every event that I've looked at so far, I've done a lot of pre-wedding events, is the social media effecation, the Pinteristification of it all has significantly changed the way the event is done from the aesthetics of it to the trends that people follow. I know there's like this craze for sage green and blush pink. There's this craze for that. I've seen that at like multiple weddings and been to. There is a like a canon of South Asian wedding industry work that is significantly being changed by social media. So many things have changed with social media and not just the South Asian wedding industry, but it we see it so noticeably in when we see things that are made specifically for pictures or social media posts. Like having a hashtag is sometimes like a really big deal, and you know, like which is fun. It's fun, but it's just interesting to see how things have changed. So, like, even just having professional Mendy artists that are charging an arm and a leg for wedding events is is like a change that maybe before it would be like you would put just put Mendy in your hand. So the story my grandma tells me is when she got married, she was given just like a blob of Mendy, and she just put it in her hand and squeezed her hand into a fist, and that was essentially what her wedding Mendy looked like. It was just like the the design of her fist was what happened. And then after that, around like probably a few years later, she said, then there was this trend of making like a little circle in the middle of your hand with the tips of your fingers that designed, which has come back. There's you know, those things always come back. I feel like I've seen that design a lot. People really like that traditional look. So they'll have that little circle kind of sun vibe on their hands, which is beautiful. And you see how like it's gotten more and more intricate, but more and more simple as well. One of those things that we've talked about in the when we talk about like the different designs meaning new things, there is a specific like henna artist, mendy artists that will charge separately if you're not picking one of their designs, or if you ask for a custom design. Like, let's say you want a little picture of your dog or the skyline of the city you live in, or maybe the skyline of where you're moving. That's sometimes an additional add-on to those, you know, of like to the the price of the package of your Mendy Mendy that you are paying for. So professional Mendy artists in Edmonton and other Canadian cities and across the diaspora are booked years, months in advance for a wedding season, and the art form of bridal mendy is very specialized. So there's now distinct styles, like you have the Mughal, the Arabic fusion, Rajasthani, Indo-Arabic, and professionals train extensively to build those portfolios. And I'm gonna be honest, this is one of those things where the price of this, because the labor and the years of experience that henna artists put into this is so justified. Like the the way that they have to sit, the angles they have to get into, the intricacy and the detail that Hannah artists achieve for your wedding day and for it being such a beautiful and intimate part of all your pictures, and you know, the main thing that you look at is like your hands, it is always in your field of view. So I think that is one of those prices that I think is definitely worth it. And we

Appropriation, Respect, And Black Henna Risks

SPEAKER_00 32:10

are almost at our end of talking about Mandy parties. But don't worry, I'm not done yapping just yet. I still have to talk about cultural appropriation and appreciation. You know, I love talking about those things. And we're gonna also talk about the globalization of henna and what it's turned into now. So there is a bit of complexity here. So henna Mendy is practiced and consumed far beyond where it origin originated. So when we have conversations about things like culture appropriation, I I always kind of hold my breath a little bit because the first person that ground up this leaf and put it on their palm and was like, oh, this kind of stains my hand, or whoa, this is kind of cool and turn it into something, maybe like 200 years later, like another community was like, Oh my, let's do this too. I saw some other guy do it, and I'm gonna do it too. Like, where they're calling it cultural appropriation. I always wonder. Because there is this conversation we have about appropriation and appreciation and how there needs to be like, you know, due like giving your citing your sources, due process. I don't know why I thought of due process, but you know what I mean when I say when you are appreciating a culture is very different than when you are appropriating or taking away from a culture because at the same time there is a complexity of people wearing henna and getting bullied for it and being like, you know, hey, what's that like thing on your hand? Or that you know, they like are very rude and people get bullied. Like that is a very real experience that people have, and then at the same time, people will go to the farmer's market on the weekend and have their quote-unquote temprani tattoo henna applied, and like you know, Western teenagers will do that at summer furrows. Um, it is a globalized phenomenon. I think it should be put on respectfully. I don't think there is anything necessarily wrong with getting your henna tattoo done at a market, but it is when there is a lot of rudeness and racism involved that it becomes a bit more of an issue. So cultural scholars and members of South Asian and North African communities have received, have made like legitimate critiques of the codification. So when it is applied as a temporary tattoo at a music festival, it is a disconnected from ritual or community, but sometimes maybe that means it can create its own ritual or community. Like tomorrow at the Riverhawks game, you can get your henna or mendy done, and it is a way for us to have cultural appreciation happen because we are doing this Bollywood-based event. We are doing it's hosted by South Asian people, we are warning you to try out what henna is because it is fun. There's also, if we go further into like the market of henna and how it is, there is the syntheticization of the henna. So there is, instead of using the beautiful plant, lazonia-based henna, there is this paraphenolidiamine or PPD that produces a darker stain, but it can cause severe allergic reactions, permanent scarring, and chemical burns. So that type of henna is not really henna, it's it's harmful, it can be harmful. And those who are unfamiliar with this plant and like unfamiliar with the origin of what henna or mendy is, they could be like severely hurt. So I think it's always good to do your research. See if you are, you know, doing some harm to yourself. I don't want you to do that. Just see, like, hey, how do I do this in a way that's nice and fine and like kind? Is like, is the person who I am getting my henna done from being compensated fairly? Is the tradition being presented like a little bit with a cultural context? Are the community traditions being like and it's being taken from acknowledged and respected? And this is a conversation that we're having today in 2026. Maybe in 20 years from now, Hannah will be a Canadian tradition. Who knows? That's the fun thing about culture, it's always changing,

Why Mendhi Still Matters

SPEAKER_00 36:00

and I get to talk to you about it right here. We're gonna close out with a number more conversations about what a Mendy party is, why it matters, and like all the conversations that we've had, or all the stuff that I've talked to you about today. So it is a beautiful tradition to have a Mendy party. It's very it's like a ritual, it's something that is layered, it is alive, it is a the centralization of community. I feel like we could even write a whole university course on this, let her let alone a couple hours on the radio with you. So let me take a few minutes to reflect on well, we ran in love with well, it matters, you know. Let's talk about that. So Hannah O'Mandy is begins as a humble shrub that thrives in the desert heat, from up that plant across thousands of years, across lots of cultures, across omjunes, oceans, trade routes, and migrations, and in the diaspora, and even the modernization of Instagram, Bollywood, Vinterest, and banquet halls. Uh, from all of that comes a tradition that is still at its core about this woman hanging out, sitting, opening her hands and their hearts to each other's stories and being decorated by people who love who they love. And on the eve of a woman's very significant change in her life of getting into a marriage, a partnership, it is a time where you are ritualistically able to gather with your loved ones and create this community. I think that's remarkable. It's this impulse to like mark this transition with marking your body and having these women gather around you to sing songs for you, to kind of hold you in this moment and carry you through this new chapter of life. So, scholars of like ritual remind us that ceremonies are not just decorative, they do real social and psychological work, they help us navigate change and they bind communities together. They also transmit knowledge from generation to generation and they make these things central. So I think that's really important. And so, for all of you listening here on the podcast or on the radio, thank you for joining me in speaking about Mendy. And I am so grateful that I get to talk to y'all about all of these fun and amazing topics. If Mel have another South Asian wedding series topics that you want me to talk about, send them on to them at the Universal Radio or at DJ Rara Ravia on Instagram. Keep tuning up. I hope you have a great day, and keep turning it up with me as it's turned 97.9 FM. Thanks for listening to the Universal Radio Network podcast. Give me a follow at DJ Rara Ravia and give us a follow at the Universal Radio. Keep it tuned at 97.9 FM on Thursdays and Mondays to hear more from me.