“"The skin is the only diary we never lose. My job isn't to draw; it's to help people remember what they've already survived."”

When I was working at Ironbuzz Tattoos in Mumbai, I was surrounded by some of the best artists in the country. We did massive, incredibly complex realism pieces. But the session that fundamentally changed how I view my job wasn't a giant back piece; it was a tiny, two-inch sparrow.

The client was a woman who had survived a terrible accident. She told me she hated looking in the mirror because all she saw was what had happened to her. We placed the bird right at the edge of her most prominent scar. When she looked in the mirror afterward, she didn't cry because of the pain of the needle—she cried because, for the first time in years, she saw art instead of trauma.

People get tattoos wrong all the time. Society tells us it’s just a phase, a reckless mistake, or a way to look tough. But most of the time? It’s people trying to anchor themselves. It’s a permanent reminder that they survived, they loved, or they overcame. I brought those skills back to Odisha not just to make cool designs, but to help people take their bodies back.