Black lettering tattoo in Devanagari script across the left ribs, set in a single line above the waistline.

Sanskrit script lettering on the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a black ink tattoo of a Devanagari script phrase running horizontally across the side of the ribcage. The letters are solid, even-weight linework with no shading, and the text sits slightly above the waist curve. The skin is pale and the background is soft and blurred, with a blue top lifted at the upper edge of the frame and a black lace bra strap visible.

Lettering Ribs Script Text Phrase Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The coach stops at the border hut at half past four, and the guard waves it through without looking up, so it falls to you to notice the old man in the third row. He holds a biscuit tin in both hands, its lid taped shut. When the officer asks what is inside, he says, "Only the things I was asked to keep." You have translated at this crossing for eleven years, and you hear him answer in a language the officer does not speak.

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You offer to help. He tells you the tin holds four strips of paper, each folded smaller than a stamp, each with a word in his brother's hand. Maitri. Karuna. Mudita. Upekkha. His brother taught them to him in a kitchen in Kandy over a pot of cooling tea. They are things you wish for strangers: kindness, sorrow shared, gladness at another's good fortune, and a calm that lets go of the rest. You tell him the officer will want to see the tin. He nods and opens it.

The officer lifts out the strips and reads them slowly, pausing on the third. "Mudita," the old man says. "Gladness for someone else's luck. That is the hard one." She has ink on her cuff and says nothing for a while. Then she hands the strips back one at a time and waves the coach on. Your own bag is searched next, and she asks what you are carrying. You tell her nothing that needs declaring.

Back on the coach, the old man presses one strip into your palm. "Keep the fourth," he says. "Equanimity is for people who have already done the others." You unfold it under the dome light as the road drops towards the valley. The ink is faint, but the letters are careful, and they say upekkha.