Henna bolo bolo

"WHAT? Go to Little India? On a Friday night? On my own?? Yeah, right! Over my dead body!" This would have been my typical reaction.

But last Friday night, I was forced to eat my words and my hat, skip over my own dead body and make my way to the only area in Singapore I am scared to go to by myself -- Little India.

So why did I go?

Sigh... a song comes to mind... with a little modification...

Charity ke liye sala kuchh bhi karega.

Just before midnight, I had received a message from SVC - Student Volunteer Corps - for whom I had done some fund-raising work last year (I had blogged about it here.) They wanted to ask me if I was available to do the same this year.

I'd love to, I told them, except that I did not have any materials on me. And the only place in Singapore that I knew would have henna cones was Little India. So I braced myself and made the arduous journey to Little India, got lost, called a friend who guided me, wandered the streets of Little India until I finally found a shop that sold henna cones. Phew.

I was up very early on saturday morning and reported to Singapore Polytechnic - the venue of the fund-raising event. I was to be a part of a carnival where I would do henna for people all day. The volunteer who had approached me showed me my table.

And the table-mat... errrr... I mean table-mate who came with it.

Now I had never done joint-venture fund-raising before. In the last 6-7 years of doing this, I'd always had a table to myself.

"This is the face-painting lady, and you'll be sharing the table with her." She told me.

I looked at the FPL just as suspiciously as she looked at me. We exchanged polite hellos.

It was still quite early, and after setting up the stall, I found myself quite jobless. Ditto for her. So we started talking.

"So where's your henna shop?" She asked.

"Err... I don't have a henna shop. I only this one in a while for charity."

"Oh okie..."

"Where's your face-painting shop?" I had to ask.

"I don't have a face painting shop. I only do this as a part-time business at birthday parties and other events."

"So what do you do?"

"I'm a senior editor in a book publishing company."

"Oh okie..."

"What about you?"

"I'm a freelance graphic designer."

Whoa, the things we had in common.

"What's your name?" She asked.

I told her. "And yours?" I asked.

"Hazel."

"Hazel... hmmm..."

Looooong pause.

"So did you get teased a lot in school?" Suddenly I found myself blurting out.

"As in?"

"As in... You know... "Hazel, you're a nut!" type of teasing?"

The moment I said it, I regretted it. I barely knew her, what the hell was I doing cracking bad jokes about her name?!

Thankfully, she started laughing. "Yes, I got teased a lot. I hated my name all through school."

"I like the name 'Hazel'." I said.

"Yeah, me too. Now." She smiled. "Hey, you want to make a poster for our table??"

"Yeah!"

And suddenly we were friends. I guess sometimes a bad joke is all it takes to break the ice and become friends with someone.

So I made our table poster, careful to use exactly half of the sheet of paper to advertise my henna and half to advertise her face painting.

"So when's it gonna start?" I asked.

"Not sure... the chief guest is not here yet... Hey, you wanna make me a henna design meanwhile??"

"Sure!" I was too happy to do it.

After I semi-handicapped her due to the wet henna on her hand, I took over making the pokemon models. She'd been making them to sell at the carnival.
















We made shitloads of them but ended up giving away all for free to the children with Down's syndrome who visited our stall.


There was a balloon sculpture stall next to ours. When I saw the balloon sculptor, I did a double take.

I walked over to him and said, "Hi, are you Victor?"


"Yes, I am! How do you know me?"

"You were featured in my magazine last year, remember?"

"Ohhh! Yes yes, you are the editor! Small world, huh? Are you still with them or doing henna fulltime?"

"Haha! No, I'm still with them."

"Give me your number, I will call you when I get calls to do balloon sculpturing at birthday parties, we can set up shop together!"

"Errr... uhhh... I don't really... why don't you ask Hazel? She's the face-painting lady!"

In five minutes or so, numbers had been exchanged and we were ready to become the trio that terrorised kids at birthday parties.

Speaking of kids, some had soon materialised at our stall out of nowhere. Hazel got busy painting the most adorable spiderman on this kid's arm.

The kid came back later to get a spider's web painted on his face. Then he asked Hazel for a mirror so he could look at it. He then proceeded to use the mirror to examine the spiderman on his arm. Hazel, the kid's mother and I burst into laughter.

"You can look at it directly, you know. You don't need a mirror." Hazel said.

The kid gave all three of us a disgusted 'What-do-you-grown-ups-know' look and continued with his inspection.

Meanwhile, I had a queue of teenagers waiting to get henna done. I soon got to work, and both Hazel and I stayed busy till it was lunchtime.















A kid was observing me as I was making this design. He remarked, "Is that a waffle in the centre?" I laughed so hard, I almost lost control of the cone.
















This girl asked me if I had any design samples to show her. "Oops, all the designs are in my head. I just follow the shape of the hand... if you can trust that." I'm glad she did. This was one of my favourites that day.

As I encountered some strange requests, I remembered a few funny incidents from last year's carnival. When the children with Down's syndrome came down to the stall, (Actually it's difficult to guess the age of someone who has Down's syndrome, so we'd been told to refer to all of them as children) there was a very shy boy amongst them. So this shy boy - I call him Bashful Benny - was looking at the henna and smiling.

"Do you want it done?" I asked him.

He pointed to his arm.

"Okay, let's do a design on your arm. What do you want?"

"My name."

"Your name? Great! What's your name?"

"Benny."

"Okay, Benny, here you go!" I wrote 'Benny' on his arm.

Soon, there were two more of them at my stall asking for the same thing.

"Same thing? Okay, so what's your name?" I asked the first one, while the second one waited.

"No, I want you to write 'Benny'."

"You want me to write 'Benny'??" I glanced at his name tag. His name was something else.

"Yes."

"Err... Okay." So I wrote 'Benny' on his arm.

The second one also wanted me to write 'Benny' on his arm!

The real Benny was standing there, enjoying the spectacle.

"You see, Benny? You're a celebrity! Everyone wants me to write your name!" I told him. He blushed again. They stuck around for a while, and soon Bashful Benny and the other two 'Bennys' were escorted away by the volunteers.


This year, I was slightly more prepared. Girls are never a problem, but usually, I have to think of what to draw for guys. The most popular guy-designs are barbed wire, lizard, spider and its web (see picture), etc.

Once I even had someone asking me to draw a dragon. I had no idea how to draw a dragon with henna, and I told him so. He insisted. I drew what I thought looked considerably like a dragon, till his girlfriend came along, took one look and exclaimed, "Wow! Dolphin! Cool!"

Gee, thanks a lot. :|

Coming back to this year's carnival, the performances by the disabled had started, and people settled down in chairs. I saw some of the most amazing performances ever. A secondary school boy wowed us with a song in Chinese. I seriously believe he was better than some of the finalists in Singapore Idol!

Next, a troup of speech and hearing impaired musicians played some very beautiful pieces. I still can't get over how someone who can't hear music can make music. Amazing.

The SVC volunteers were next, and they put up a very unique performance. They played songs by boybands, and used sign language to translate them to the audience. It looked like a very well-choreographed dance, especially because they were all in sync. Brilliant idea, I must say. And I wondered how come the actual singers in the boybands -- even though they do almost the same actions -- look like such dhakkans in their videos.

Hazel then asked me if I wanted her to paint something for me. I jumped at the chance.

"Yes yes, I want!"

"What do you want?"


"What is your favourite?"

"Powerpuff girls."

"Okay!"

"All three of them?"

"Three?? Whoa! No, one maybe?"

"Which one?"

"What do you mean?"

"Blossom, Bubbles or Buttercup?"

Sheesh.

"I dunno! I'm not really a fan." I said. "The pink one maybe?"

"Oh great! She's Blossom, she's the most popular one."



So she painted this really cool tattoo-like Blossom on my hand.

(By the way, the colour she had used for the hair was a tad stronger than the rest, so after my bath the next morning, everything else had been washed off, but an eerie orange wig was around on my hand for one whole day.)

At the end of the day, I was so dead tired that I felt like going home and collapsing into it, dead to the world until sunday afternoon. But I was supposed to meet my friends for dinner and I turned up, proudly showing off my Powerpuff Girl.

I was tired but I felt really good on the inside. I guess that's the thing about volunteer work -- it's a win-win situation. Someone benefits and you feel really great.

It is probably the only place where the time=money equation is so obvious. Time or money -- give whatever you have more of.

Though sometimes I do wonder if one is really supposed to have so much fun doing volunteer work.