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I work hard to quiet my nerves as my family’s concerns about me commuting alone from the Gateway of India to Santa Cruz get into my head and the “what if’s” start. “What if I am not good enough?” “What if the art form I have loved and admired since I was a young girl eludes me?” “What if?” But as the train pulls out of the station and the streets, smells, and people of Mumbai pass me by, I feel exhilarated. I did it. I broke away from my family and am here in Mumbai on my own. Zarna lives in a building similar to my family’s. Concrete, broken down and dirty on the outside with narrow, dark stairwells and windows on the inside that let in very little light. The only color is the laundry hung out to dry. As I climb the stairs, I realize that for the next two weeks I will become a part of Zarna’s daily routine in the home she has grown up in. She invites me in. Her mother offers me chai. We sit cross-legged on the couch in their living room and begin. I am transported back to when I first fell in love with henna. The women in my family were gathered in celebration and ritual preparing for the wedding to come. And I watched as the henna was applied with an artistry and beauty that mesmerized me. Now, with one of Zarna’s hand-made henna cones and a board to practice on, I shyly put cone to board and draw a straight line. Almost immediately she stops me. It is all wrong— the way I am holding the cone, the thickness of the henna and the line itself. We spend the next two weeks progressing from lines, to circles, to shapes and shading. She imparts her skills and knowledge about the different styles of henna—Indian, Arabic, and Rose. We spend time in the kitchen, mixing the paste and making the cones. She shares her sketchbooks and her mother’s hand-made jewelry. We have conversations as she collects mail from a bucket attached to a make-shift pulley leaning over her balcony about her joy—she is to be married— and her grief for the loss of her brother. We build a bridge between her life and mine. Between our lives and the generations of women who have practiced this art form before us. Between our present, our past and our future.