“Not a tattoo artist, but this is more of the finished work of a scummy tattoo artist and ‘Hey, I actually read that language.’
Many many many years ago I had been working and traveling around many countries across Asia and since I was in Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand at the time I took a few days off to unwind. Over the next three days, I regularly saw this Danish girl at some of the beach bars. She had a large tattoo that looked fairly new going down the right side of her back and torso. The tattoo was a phrase in Punjabi rather than the typical Asian scripts of Sanskrit, Chinese, or Japanese.
You don’t see a lot of those so it really stuck out. I am originally from this area in India. I finally mustered up enough courage to speak to her and asked her what the tattoo said. According to her, it was an old hippie Sanskrit proverb about bringing peace and love to the world. She had gotten this while traveling across India. She seemed so happy relaying her Indian travel stories, the mysticism, and why she finally got her very first tattoo. I felt so bad for her knowing what it really said. The characters were written so largely I couldn’t see how she could maybe convert it into something else.
The impression I got from her was she had left India earlier than anticipated so I asked about this. Turns out the last few weeks she had been hassled by quite a lot of guys. Even the tattoo artist was gropey and seemed angry when she kept turning his advances down over multiple visits, simply wanting the tattoo to be finished. I finally told her what the tattoo said and she was mortified. Not believing me at first I Skyped a female cousin of mine in India who confirmed what I had said. The girl couldn’t stop crying. She always wore something over her bikini after that.
The tattoo actually read ‘This girl is a floozy. Use her and abuse her.’ I have no idea what happened to her afterward as I had to get back to work, but I’m presuming she had to somehow get the tattoo removed which going by the size would have been very expensive and painful. Poor girl.”