hairy tales

I have lots of thick hair – cascades of it. It is definitely my crowning glory. But it also has its problems. The first being that, like God, it is omnipresent. My husband glares at me whenever he finds a strand on the sofa, in the car, on the pillow or wherever. I tell him testily that it is not by choice that I am losing my once abundant locks, but it seems to be happening and nothing I do is making any difference. He snorts at that and goes back to doing whatever it is that he was working at. I sigh sadly at look at my reflection showing dark wavy hair flowing up to half my back and reminisce over my college days when it was waist length and way thicker as well. Well the glory doth diminish but what the hey – so does everything else.

The second problem is that I never have good hair days. My locks have a life of their own. They don’t subject to the rule of comb or brush but go any which way they like. I pull it into a hair band and am left with a bushy raccoon tail in the back and a suddenly small-sized oval face in front. Not good at all. Now if its wet it hangs comparatively limply and immediately begins metamorphosing to wayward tendrils by the time my hair is half dry. Hairdryers take too long to dry my hair and leave it brittle so I dry it the natural way – by leaving it as is. Not that drying and styling help, my hair is simply too stubborn for that and since I don’t hold with chemicals much, gels are out of the question. On those days I envy the straight, sleek looking hair I see around me and wonder whether I could ever look so chic.

Still it does have its good days when it does all that good hair is supposed to and I can walk about showing it off – but usually that is in winter and late at night so I don’t have much of an audience but it does warm the cockles of my heart when it behaves so. I have had a lot of people over the years ask me what I do to make the hair the way it is – they want to know what oil I use, what shampoo, whether I use henna , curds, chocolate sauce, eye of newt or anything else. I tell them I wash it daily and that’s about it. No one believed me – they attributed it to my being from Kerala where it is rumored that all the women are richly hair-endowed. I suppose I could have come up with a recipe for a fake foul-smelling concoction involving lots of preparation that could then be sold – ultimately it would cause the women involved to wash their hair daily anyway and voila – the results would be there for all to see. But silly me I stick with the truth and get no credit at all…