Black ink tattoo of the word AHIMSA in Latin capitals with Devanagari script beneath it, placed on the upper chest near the collarbone.

Ahimsa lettering on upper chest

Lettering · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a small black tattoo on the upper chest, showing the word AHIMSA in bold block capitals above a line of Devanagari script. The lettering is solid black with crisp edges and sits in the centre of the frame against a teal hooded top and a pink strap. The image is taken at a slight angle, so the text appears partly reversed.

Lettering Chest Text Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Cook Edith Sallow had been at the stove since four when the mate came down the ladder holding a rat by the tail. "Three of them since Tuesday," he said, "and the biscuit is half chewed." She took the creature from him, a grey thing with a torn ear, and turned it to the lamp. Above her dresser her grandmother had painted a single word in Hindi letters, and Edith had never learned to read it properly, but she knew what it meant. Her grandmother had told her it meant do not harm what you do not need to harm.

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So she set a tin of oats in the lazarette each night and at dawn carried the rats up the hatch in a bucket. She let them down the mooring line onto the quay at Shields. The mate grumbled that they would only come back on the next tide, and they did, and she carried them ashore again. He said it was foolishness. She said it was cheaper than a cat.

In March a gale took the foremast and the Marigold lay at anchor off Flamborough for nine days on salt cod and damp sea biscuit. The rats went over the side with the rubbish, all but one, the grey one with the torn ear, which sat on the coaming in the dark and watched her knead dough by the stove's red glow.

On the tenth morning the mate pulled on his sea boot and found the grey rat curled inside it, warm as a loaf. He stood there a long while with one foot bare. Then he set the boot on the locker, put the kettle on, and never once mentioned traps again.