Delhiwale: The girl with the heart tattoo who lived to chase her dreams

An accident made Sumukhi Seth reconsider her plans for life. She decided it was time to live her childhood dream.

Her future almost seemed ordained. Someday, Sumukhi Seth would be a corporate executive. And that would be it.

Sumukhi Seth at her home in Civil Lines. (Mayank Austen Soofi / HT Photo)

But a near-fatal car crash left her bedridden for over a year, causing Ms Seth to ponder more than a little.

She recalls her childhood when she loved doing ink drawings on her own body. And there were other considerations, of course, before she finally decided to plunge into tattooing. So, after her recovery, Ms Seth went on to spend countless hours as an apprentice practising tattooing on silicon pads. Now, with her own briefcase studio, Ms Seth regards the profession as “akin to an artistic surgery you do on someone’s body”.

“The sad thing is that your art has been given away forever. You may never see it again!” We’re chatting in a sprawling bungalow in north Delhi’s Civil Lines. Her family is made up primarily of businesspeople. Her father, Suresh, is a builder, while her brother, Raghuvar, works in a corporate firm.

Meanwhile, a tiny red heart on her wrist reminds us of the proverbial heart on a sleeve, with all its wanderings. “Life is pretty much turning out the way I wanted.”