Vermilion, hookah pot and chillum pipe for sale at the street market of Haridwar

From the archive record

In India, women traditionally indicate they are married by making a vermilion mark on their forehead or hairline with a powder called sindoor. A hookah (also known as a waterpipe, narghile, arghila, qalyān, or shisha) is a single or multi-stemmed instrument for vaporizing and smoking flavored tobacco called shisha in which the vapor or smoke is passed through a water basin ‒ often glass-based ‒ before inhalation. Depending on the placement of the coal above the shisha, a hookah can be used to produce smoke by burning the shisha or used to create water vapor by melting it at a lower temperature. A chillum, or chilam, is a straight conical pipe with end-to-end channel, traditionally made of clay and used since at least the 18th century by wandering Hindu monks, known as sadhus in India. It w