Woman seen from behind with a black lettering tattoo in Gurmukhi script across her upper back, between the shoulder blades.

Gurmukhi script across upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman stands with her back to the camera in a coral slip dress with crossed braided straps, a black bow in her hair and a low ponytail. A black ink tattoo of Gurmukhi script runs horizontally across her upper back between the shoulder blades. The soft natural light from a tall window keeps the tattoo in dark greyscale against her pale skin.

Lettering Back Script Text Bow Dress

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Dhillon never let the lodgers see her write, so when I found her at the bureau in the back parlour of Seacrest Lodge, pen lifted and ink drying on the nib, I knew the letter had been waiting a long time. Outside the sash window the November tide was dragging shingle back down the beach with a sound like someone sweeping a floor. Her brother's letter lay open beside the teacup, creased soft from being folded and unfolded, its lines of Gurmukhi marching across the blue paper like washing on a line.

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She tapped the page. "Read me the top line. I want to hear it in your English voice before I answer."

I read it slowly, sounding out the letters she had taught me over three winters: the small hook that sits on every word, and the straight bar that holds the whole line together. It said nothing I hadn't guessed. The shop in Ludhiana was sold. Her brother was keeping the bicycle. And the last words, the ones she had pushed under the teacup, asked whether she still remembered the way down to the river at home.

She dipped the pen and wrote beneath his line, then stopped. "I never could keep the bar straight," she said. "It always wanders off like a tide that has forgotten where the shore is." She handed me the pen and told me to finish it. I wrote her reply in my clumsy hand, one word at a time, while the wind rattled the sash.

When I sealed the envelope it smelled of salt and ink, and the line across the top of her page ran level as a horizon, the only straight thing in the house. In the morning the post van would take it inland, and the sea would keep coming in without asking anyone's leave.