Black and grey Ganesha tattoo on a forearm, with an ornate crown, an om symbol on the brow and dotwork lotus shading behind the head.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ganesha with lotus mandala on forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows the elephant-headed deity Ganesha facing forward, wearing a decorated crown with beaded drops and an om symbol on the brow. Bold outlines, smooth grey shading on the face and trunk, and stippled dotwork fill the lotus-like pattern behind the head. The design is framed centrally on the forearm against a dark background, with the tattoo filling most of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The tarpaulin over your stall has started to sag, and the rain is finding the seam above the brass bells, so you lift the corner with a broom handle and watch a bead of water run down the trunk of the small elephant god you keep on the crate. Nobody buys anything in weather like this. The market at Holloway Yard empties by three, leaving the cobbles shining and the gutters full of tinsel from somebody's wedding stall.

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A girl of perhaps nine comes running under the arcade, her school bag soaked through, one shoe stuck in a drain grate. She is not crying, which is worse. You crouch, work the shoe free with both hands, and she tells you her mum's van has gone without her. You know the van. It parks by the chip shop every Thursday. You give her a sip of your flask tea and tell her to stand under the awning and wait, because the van always comes back round for the second loop.

She asks what the elephant is for. You say he clears the road for people who are about to set out, and that you have had a lot of practice standing in front of things that want to be moved. She laughs, properly this time. Then the van's hazards blink at the corner, and she runs, shoe squelching, and does not look back, which is how it should be.

When you lift the tarpaulin again the rain has thinned to a fine grey mist. The little brass god's trunk still holds one drop, and you leave it there, because the stall is closed and nothing else in the yard needs fixing tonight.

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