All women love their hair, whatever its style and state. Right from childhood, I was keen to have long, thick and lustrous black hair. My cousin had it up to her knee, and I just loved it. One of my favourite deities, Sita, is said to have had that kind of hair, which she decorated with a golden plait and plait-bells. One could see in pictures the long golden plait on the day following Ramanavami, the day Ram and Sita were wed.
I did not aspire for the golden stuff, but definitely longed for long and thick black hair. During childhood I attended a dance recital. Its heroine, Satyabhama, would typically spin around her plait by holding it in the middle, and over her right shoulder, as she sang. I was impressed. I would do whatever it took to have my black hair thick, long and lustrous.
I agreed to get my hair tonsured twice in the hope of that happening. I learnt that my neighbour had applied shoe-flower-infused coconut oil for thick, lustrous and long hair; so I followed suit. I would rub red shoe-flower petals on to my scalp for thickness and wash my hair with bitter soap nut to ensure its health. I would feel proud every summer when my mother made a flower-plait with jasmines, a plait which grew thicker and longer by the year. I did not have the thickest and longest hair in school, but it was good enough. By the time I left school, it would hit the person sitting by my side when I swung my plait back.
In college, I learnt of the Prabandha Kanya, whose plait typically resembled a shiny black cobra. I admired the model’s hair in a hair tonic advertisement. To make my hair smell good, I washed it with shampoo. A pest infested all shoe-flowers in my garden, so I tried different hair oils, whatever was suggested by anybody. I now did not face the threat of tonsure as the family considered it inauspicious for a young girl. I lengthened my hair with fancy, long plait-bells, whenever I wanted to see it cross my knees.
Now I was into a job, I had no time for my hair, which became weak, lacklustre and full of split-ends and dandruff. It demonstrated my carelessness. Yet, I was too fond of it to have cropped it. I hoped I’d be able to nurture it to its glorious days, someday.
That day arrived when I happened to meet a Keralite colleague’s wife. Do we have Prabandha Kanyas and Satyabhamas even in these days, I wondered. She would not have required false hair, as I did, when she got married. Her lovely hair added to the four long rows of jasmines she was sporting. I promptly asked her about the secret of her hair. She revealed it as Ayurveda, and explained the process.
Thanks to my colleague’s wife, my hair regained its lost glory after many decades. My genes ensured the black hue of my hair. I was at peace with myself until one afternoon, when I read a news item on the trauma faced by chemotherapy-administered cancer patients because of loss of their hair and the noble gesture of teenage college girls. I was upset. I brought my plait over my right shoulder and examined it. My thick, long and lustrous black hair did not give me happiness this time.
Then I was inspired by the noble souls of Women’s Christian College, Chennai, who, on World Cancer Day 2014, gave up their hair to donate wigs to cancer patients. What’s the use of going ga-ga over it, if it can’t even emulate a teenager in making a traumatised cancer patient smile, I asked myself, and headed for the salon, before I could have second thoughts.
dr_csl@yahoo.co.in
