#India ink for tattoos full

'Wear dark shirt, full sleeves, leave your hair open or if need be wear makeup to hide it,' he says. Corporate grooming coach and etiquette trainer Yatan Ahluwalia advises that if you have a tattoo, keep it hidden. Given the clean hygienic parlour, good tattoo artists, tattoos are definitely more accessible now, but whether they are acceptable is another matter. In between his many celeb assignments - he's the personal tattoo artist to Hrithik Roshan, Sanjay Dutt and Saif Ali Khan - Hakim personally fields 3-4 tattoo requests daily. 'Even in the so-called IT hubs like Bangalore and Hyderabad the demand for tattoos has grown exponentially,' he says. Today, he has six tattoo lounges in Mumbai and one each in Hyderabad and Bangalore. In 2005, he started with a small parlour in Mumbai. In fact, the growth of the tattoo trend can be gauged from Hakim's progress. The average age is likely to be above 25. People actually make a very conscious decision to go in for a tattoo after having given it careful thought,' he says. 'It's not a coming of age thing in India as it is in the West.

But celebrity tattoo artist and director of Hakim's Aalim Tattoo Lounge, Aalim Hakim, feels that the average age of a tattoo getter is higher in India. Tattoos are considered to be an under-25 phenomenon with most people going in for an ink by that age. It's being the official expression of rebels and hippies that corporate world doesn't look kindly towards it. Maybe because they started as the bastion of the marginalised: gypsies, freak shows, criminals and the non-conformists. By and large, the consensus is tattoos and workplace don't mix. In other words, tattoos are not an issue in a corporate environment, provided they remain unseen. Like most of the corporate dress codes - ties, formal pants, jackets - no tattoos at workplace is an unspoken rule. No one cares what you have on your body as long as it stays hidden,” she says. While at work, the HR executive, who probably hands out dress codes to people on not to wear visible body art, decided to get her shoulder tattooed as it stays covered while at work. It was after eight years of working that Mishra decided to get inked. Shikha Mishra, 31, a human resource executive with a mobile phone company, has a phoenix inked on her right shoulder.

India ink for tattoos