Blog@GraceJunction

Every other Saturday, Joshua Haedelt leaves his home in Westchester County, NY, and makes the hour-long drive to Shotsie’s tattoo studio in Haledon, NJ. There, Joshua, a 28-year-old record executive, prostrates himself on a table for three hours while tattooist Juno Vassi pricks his back thousands of times with inky needles. For the next week, Joshua is miserable, bandaged, and sore. He won’t fully heal for two weeks and then it’s back to the drawing board.

It’s the most painful trend since whalebone corsets. Tattooing, the art of the primitive and the outlaw, has been moving steadily into mainstream. No longer are tattoos for the exclusive decoration of sailors, marines, and bikers. Tattoos are leaving a permanent mark on arms, legs, chests and other body parts of a growing number of celebrities and even normal people. (more…)

Hey Shridhar!

Sorry I did not get any reply from your personal mail id and did not have any contact numbers to get in touch with you for these last two years. Heard that you are doing well in life, that you joined an IT major and are now settled in the U.S. Ravi gave me the news when I was chatting with him. You are the only guy who has got settled so fast, but you deserve it.

It has been two desperate years for me, hunting jobs and making ends meet has been a Herculean task. Natasha and I soon moved in to another apartment after our graduations, she has landed a job in a bank and I am still languishing in a call centre, the same old routines, only thing that has changed is that now I am a floor manager. The BPO’s have been hit hard with the fall in number of clients due to the American slowdown. Pressures to keep our jobs are increasing and my medical bills are not likely to come down any time soon. (more…)