Just The Way You Are

I've always hated my hair. Hated it for its nature, colour, texture, for it being it. By nature, obstinate and impudent. Colour, a curious hybrid of black and brown . Textured dry enough to entice the bovine. I've chided it for starting so high up my forehead. Why couldn't it have started lower and given me a graceful hairline instead of a forehead !? They say a high forehead is a sign of keen intelligence. I say, I could live with the sign if only I had the stuff (sigh).



Time and again have I tried to tame this beast. My first experiment was when I was a naive teenager at the hands of a smart talking hair dresser. She convinced me she could rid me forever of my forehead shame and cut me a FRINGE. Well, cut she did, blow dried it and hurriedly showed me the door. Barely ten metres out of the salon, ten minutes later, I could feel the damn thing curling upwards. I had to live with those horrible bangs for years. Years when they earned epithets such as 'Devi's Grapes' (and less tasteful ones) as I squirmed inside.



When pay cheques became a regular feature in my life and I realised that as a corporate being, I needed to update my looks (read hair), I went on the hunt again. This time there was plenty to choose from. I could straighten it, poker straighten it or smoothen it....whatnot. I displayed my naivete again by sitting myself down for a HAIR STRAIGHTENING session. It was a torturous three-hour session which left me with a considerably light wallet and a neck ache that lasted for days. I got immediate reactions ranging from " what's wrong with your face" "there's something wrong with you, yar" to ' did you get your hair licked by a cow ?". Not quite the reactions I'd hoped /paid for. Besides these comments which I came to dread each time I came across someone I knew from my pre-hair straightening days, there was the problem of clogged drains at home. Each time I washed my hair or even just brushed, it would leave my scalp in terrifying clumps clogging drains, it would form into disgusting little balls and float all over the place. The husband was evidently not happy.The maid threatened to quit.



Time passed as it is wont to do. My original curly, frizzy friends were back before I knew it. There was a horrible phase when half my hair, from crown downwards, was curly and the other half poker straight. It was a hair style fit for a Martian, only half the country's women were sporting it, all having had an experiment with hair straightening. With more passage of time, the original hair chased out the salon-bought ones and I once again found myself with unmanageable hair and bad hair days. That was when Jawed Habeeb opened shop just next to my house. The most famous hairstyle salon in India, just outside my front door and offering a 25% discount for all hair treatment. It was destiny. I walked in and told a nice looking hair dresser that I do not want to straighten my hair, but I want to do something to my hair. She suggested HAIR SMOOTHENING. Wha, I asked. " Youva hay will not be poker isstraight. It whill honly be issmooth" she told me in Bengali, err.. English. More hours at the salon, more hours persuading family, more money exchanged and presto, I had new hair. Again.



Only it again fell in clumps and I was waking up in cold sweat from nightmares where I lost all my hair in clumps. The salon people suggested I use a particular brand's shampoo ( Rs. 275 for 225ml) and conditioner ( Rs. 450 for a similarly small quantity) and come regularly for hair spa ( each session not less than Rs. 700 plus tax). High maintenance, but at least I finally got the hair I wanted, I thought as I caressed it. That was when I saw her.



Or at least I thought it was her. Aunty R. A very elegant, polished and well turned -out lady who was my mother-in-law's classmate at Stella Maries. I was always impressed by her bearing and attire and wished to be like her in my fifties. But on that day she looked nothing like her old self. In place of her usual starched cotton saree was a salwar -kameez suit a size too big for her. But what truly frightened me was her hair. Usually combed down and not a strand out of place, she had let it loose and it was a shade of orange. She walked up to me and warmly asked after my family. About my work and my one year old daughter. I managed to answer all her questions, but just could not fathom her transformation. It was revealed a minute later when she told me that a year back she was detected with breast cancer and was undergoing chemo. She had lost all her hair and was sporting a wig. A horrible one with a strange color. She didn't linger on the topic and we bade good bye soon after. But I stood still minutes after she left trying to come to terms with her new image.



I was still thinking about her when the driver asked me to roll down the windows as the AC was not working. As the car gathered speed, the wind whipped my hair over my face. As I slowly pulled it away and felt it between my fingers, I realised there were tears in my eyes. No more experiments with the dears, I love my hair just the way it is.