Matching tattoos are nothing new. Couples often choose the same symbol, date, quote or tiny design to mark their relationship. But Arshdeep Singh and actor Samreen Kaur have taken the idea in a much more personal direction.
Because once you smooth every irregularity out, you may have a cleaner design, but you also lose the handwriting itself.
On Arshdeep’s upper arm is an “AS” handwritten by Samreen, while Samreen has an “SK” written in Arshdeep’s handwriting. The Indian cricketer and actor recently chose to get each other’s handwritten initials tattooed on their upper arms. And there’s a small detail that makes the tattoos far more meaningful: neither of them wrote the initials that they now carry. Each initial sits alongside a tiny red heart drawn in one continuous fine line. At first glance, the tattoos look like a coordinated pair. Look a little closer, though, and they aren’t exact copies of each other. The visual language is shared, but the handwriting belongs to two different people. And that’s really where the idea becomes interesting. Handwriting has its own personality. A letter might lean slightly to one side, a line might become heavier halfway through, or the spacing might be a little uneven. Those details are usually considered imperfections. In a tattoo, they’re precisely the things that can make a handwritten design feel real. Instead of correcting those quirks, the tattoos keep them. The changing pressure, the slight shift in the slant and the tiny breaks where a pen would naturally leave the paper have been preserved. The lettering hasn’t been turned into perfectly balanced typography. It starts looking like a font. Here, the precision has been saved for the tattooing rather than the letterforms. The fine lines need to be clean and consistent, while the original handwriting remains recognisable. Even the little red hearts follow that restrained approach, adding a romantic touch without taking attention away from the initials. So while these may technically be matching tattoos, they’re not really identical tattoos. They’re personal to each person. Arshdeep isn’t simply wearing his own initials on his arm. He’s carrying Samreen’s handwritten version of them. And Samreen is doing the same with Arshdeep’s handwriting. That’s a subtle difference, but it changes the meaning of the entire idea. A matching symbol is something two people choose together. These tattoos are something one person has literally written for the other. The handwriting becomes a small physical trace of the person behind it, preserved in a way that a standard typeface or shared symbol simply can’t replicate. There was room for individuality, too. During the same visit to Aliens Tattoos’ Bangalore studio, Samreen got a separate birth flower tattoo. Created by tattoo artist Sumit Huddar, the piece features delicate stems, leaves and blooms in the same fine-line style. Unlike the initials, the birth flower isn’t designed as part of the couple’s matching set. It stands on its own. And that contrast feels intentional. One tattoo represents a shared bond, while the other is about Samreen herself. Love and individuality don’t have to compete. Someone can carry a meaningful piece of another person while still having something that belongs entirely to them. That balance is visible across Samreen’s tattoos. The initials connect her to Arshdeep, while the birth flower remains rooted in her own identity. The overall visual direction was shaped by designer Abhishek Gawai, who brought the handwritten initials and heart motifs together while keeping the original character of the writing intact. Tattoo artist Sunny Sen then translated those letterforms into fine-line tattoos without turning them into overly polished typography. It was to make sure it still felt like theirs. And perhaps that’s what makes these tattoos stand out. They’re small, understated and easy to miss at first. But behind two simple sets of initials is an idea that’s much more intimate than the usual matching tattoo. The imperfections were kept on purpose. The little things that might normally be edited away are what give the designs their identity. In the end, Arshdeep and Samreen aren’t just wearing the same tattoo. They’re carrying each other’s handwriting – permanently, and in a form that couldn’t belong to anyone else.
