KARACHI: With no Taraweeh prayers after breaking the last fast, shopping to take care of last-minute details was the only thing on everyone’s minds on Chand Raat.

Shopping areas from Saddar to Hyderi and Clifton to Tariq Road and Bahadurabad had some looking for the right shoes and matching dupatta or bangles as the husbands who drove their dear better halves to these areas frantically searched for parking spots. If not that then they made themselves useful by carrying around the baby or helping keeping the young boys in the family busy with something or the other as the females shopped like there was no tomorrow.

But there was going to be a tomorrow, of course, in the form of Eid, of course. And that was what all the mad rush was about after all. The top of the ladies list was mehndi and all the big shopping centres and malls know it well as all had made arrangements for experts in henna design to come and apply henna on the hands and feet of customers who had time to think about what else they needed to buy ahead of the big day while the mehndiwali applied the mehndi.

“We only use pure, chemical-free mehndi,” was the favourite line of every woman making intricate designs occupying a small stool or a chair on pavements. And when asked how they know, some would say the chemical ones are in the shape of a red cone or blue cone or green, gold or silver cone. For each one of them the chemical was in some other colour cone henna that they did not have. Simple!

But it is true that the henna that creates a dark stain have some percentage of chemical added. It also comes off easily, actually it doesn’t fade like pure henna, it peals off. The pale yellow stain that it leaves behind is due a bit of pure henna.

Henna application had varied costs. Those who had it done at beauty parlours or salons paid more – from Rs600 per hand to Rs1,000 and more. There they also had choices such as white mehndi, etc. But on the footpaths one could negotiate. Also one could first take a stroll to check out all the designs and then select who you wanted it done by.

Dua, who works at a beauty parlour, said that she specially takes a couple of days off for Chand Raat as this way applying henna on the footpath is time she gets more customers and she makes more money, too. “I charge Rs200 per hand, hundred each for front and back. And it takes me 30 to 45 minutes per client,” she told Dawn. “I get around 30 clients and make good money this way,” she said.

Naila, another henna application expert, said that most of her clients otherwise were brides coming to the beauty parlours. “Bridal mehndi designs are more complicated. They are usually dense designs. In comparison Eid mehndiwork is a breeze. Here most people want simple Arab or Indian designs,” she said.

Asked the difference between Arab and Indian designs, Naila explained that Arab designs involved more dots while Indian henna designs focused on accentuating the fingers. She said that she had first learnt how to make henna designs from a Memon lady. “Somehow girls from the Memon and Bohra communities excel at this art,” she shared.

With the henna application done, the shoppers with henna on their hands walked around keeping their arms away from their bodies and one felt sorry for the person who accidentally bumped into them in the crowded shopping centres. But what went in their favour was that there were too many like them to understand their problem only too well. There were mothers with daughters or cousins chaperoned by one aunty nominated by the family to take care of last-minute shopping.

During the chaos pick pockets, too, were looking for opportunities. That’s what the police reporting camps were for even though many of them were sans police. With ends decorated with henna, who could even think about going back home to fix dinner? Hence the eateries, too, did good business.

And shopping centres weren’t the only places full of people, the sweetmeat shops and bakeries had men whose wives were not the vermicelli cooking sort lining up while super markets, grocery shops and milk and yogurt places had men whose wives were the vermicelli and other delights experts. That’s Chand Raat for you!

Published in Dawn, June 26th, 2017