Hairy Tales: Volume 1

Thumbing through the photo albums that have painstakingly chronicled my life, one very strange detail is immediately manifest: in every single picture my hair is always up, constrained in tightly wound braids, stabbed awkwardly in turn with a multitude of black bobby pins of various shapes and sizes to keep the hair in place. For a good eighteen years of my life, this was the state that my hair had to endure, restrained securely like Hannibal Lecter in his full straight-jacket and mouth guard regalia.


My hair was always an anomaly, the one piece of the puzzle that didn’t quite fit. Incredibly curly, what would reach well down my back when wet would suddenly retreat well above my shoulders and outwards once dry, like those huge satellite-like contraptions that neutered dogs wear. Caring for these dreadful locks was an ordeal in and of itself; I have lost several combs, which I have yet to find, within my hair’s tangled, dense mass, and several others have snapped neatly in two, unable to handle the preternatural tenacity of my incredibly stubborn hair. It would take my mother, armed with a battalion of Frizz-Ease, detanglers, moisturizers and shine inducers, a good two and a half hours every other day to calm my unruly head into some semblance of order. My mother, unfortunately for me, was of the school which walks around carrying a big stick (a lesson she probably imbibed from the browbeating nuns that ran the convent school she attended), and she refused at all costs to admit defeat to my hair, which as she accurately insisted "could smell fear." Many are the clumps of hair and bleeding scalps that can attest to the success of her methods in the war against my head.

In my hair-induced anguish, I turned next to the root of my problems, my family tree and the genetic treasure-chest--and I use that term extremely lightly--that they endowed me with. Apart from clucking sympathetically and tossing blame at the other side of the family with the alacrity that accompanies the handling of a piping hot potato-- Didn't C's second cousin twice removed have the exact same problem? No, no, the liars! Everyone knows E's sister was the one with the wild hair and that didn't get better till after she had kids-- no one had any practical solutions to offer. The truth of the matter is, they really didn't have to because the blame could in no way be attributed to any one of them. My paternal grandmother had long, thick hair that stayed an enviable raven black until she was 65. My mother's niece's own coiffure formed a well-behaved, single braid that ended well past her butt and was bigger in circumference than a can of chili-- all by the time she had turned 12. My cousin's accomplishment is actually so revered on my mom's side of the family that it places a very close second (probably to the family store, of all things, which has only managed to provide generations of our family with an identity in our native place) on our list of treasured heirlooms. Even my own sister has gentle, stick-straight hair that easily grew past her butt, gaining her membership in an ever increasing club on both sides of my family from which I was irrevocably and most tragically barred.

Relegated to the sidelines, the state of my hair had put me in an understandable funk. Indian women are obsessed with their hair, as the constant barrage of advertisements for Meera Herbal Shampoo, Aswini Hair Oil, Garnier-Fructis etc. will attest to, all showing models swishing long,thick, shiny curtains of hair billowing carelessly in the breeze. While I had comforted myself before with the fact that these models had probably been well air-brushed and their glistening locks computer generated, it became harder and harder to believe this thinly veiled illusion as I was constantly surrounded by women in my own family with hair more gorgeous than the enviable specimens in the commercials. There was little left for me to do as my ears smoked in envy, except to continue with any home remedy suggested to me, no matter how ludicrous. And for years I did just that, marinating my head in oil steeped with foul-smelling herbs and spices, foregoing shampoo for rinses with peanut flour (which only made it seem as if I had an unfortunate case of dandruff), and my personal favorite, basting my hair with slimy egg washes to improve shine and softness.

TO BE CONTINUED......