“A Mantra of Peace and Happiness” is a project that holds so much love and dedication for me, as it took focus from three people, and created strong bonds. It has a long story, but it is one of those tattoos that has kept me working even when it was a really hard time being a tattoo-artist, struggling to keep up and struggling to find my own path.
Regin came to me with an old tribal that he wanted covered up, just blacked out completely, and in the beginning i was very hesitant with just how black i wanted to make his arm, but he was completely dedicated to going all in, so we ended up with a black upper arm, and from there constructed to lotus-leafs on the chest and the Asanoha-pattern on the lower arm, with the Unalome on the back of it.
I was eager to make some sort of elegance on the chest, and Regin wanted something to balance it out and reflect his rather new path in life, so i suggested that we talked to my friend Satya, a relatively new-found friend of mine from Calcutta. Satya has made it his mission in life to teach about the use of Mantras, and i really liked the idea of involving this. So to do this the best way, i asked Satya to hand-draw the mantra in Sanskrit on Regin, after which i polished the text a bit before tattooing it.
Throughout the process we basically had Regin being ever patient, me being overwhelmed and nervous about tattooing traditional Sanskrit and Satya mumbling the mantra over and over, occasionally eating a lot of cake (all three of us)
This is the kind of journey that i will never forget, and the process ended up tying me closely to both of them, both healers in each their own way and both men i am honoured to have as friends.