As they head to colleges, they seek to carve out an identity by doing “cool things” to look different a crowd of thousands. They don’t want to be an average Joe. While there are more than thousand ways to add to your “cool quotient”, consensus on DU campus is that tattoos are one “cool stuff” worth flaunting.

“It’s like hundreds of tiny injections piercing my skin at the same time,” says Mayank Matta, a first year college student, as an artist runs the tattoo machine over his forearm to carve out his name.

But “it’s worth the pain,” he quickly adds.“The demand for tattoos has definitely gone up. The colleges are about to open and a lot of teenagers who are either going to join college or heading back to their classes after the summer break, are approaching us to get a tattoo,” says Lokesh Verma, tattoo artist and owner of Devil’z Tattooz in Vasant Vihar.