As a kid and in my teens, having been endowed with thick long tresses , it was always my secret passion to have short bobbed hair which was just becoming a fashion then. Now there were two problems with cutting my hair - will my family agree to it??and what if my hair doesn't grow to be long again?? - a girl putting scissors to her hair was surely an inauspicious sign(which i secretly did.....twice). Anyway having entered high school in 1994 I had to do something to prove that I was a rebel too and in tune with the times. But not having the means to afford a parlour, I cut my hair myself (not the length but a few strands on either sides of the forehead. And for many days, no one took notice of it, until one day when my mom was plaiting my hair she couldn't get a hold on those tiny strands (which started to grow). She asked if I experimented on my hair (well an indirect way of asking if I tried to cut it :P). I got nervous, yet I bluntly replied that I did not. She already knew I was lying. Days passed I started to feel I made a mistake, the growing strands became a huge distraction, they kept falling in my eyes. At one point I started to look like a bull with twisted horns. Finally the day came when even my parents felt I should get my hair cut...I was excited,. My first hair cut was a deep "U" cut. The next day my friends bemoaned the loss of such "beautiful" hair which they would have given an arm and a leg to have and of course my grandmother thought that it was a sure sign of Kaliyuga and all the bad things that were to mark the end of the world.
Have you noticed that people tell you how beautiful your hair was only after it is lost - as if they never noticed it all the time it was on your head?
Once I was married to a man who didnt notice if I was totally bald or had my hair matted like a sadhu in Kailash, my adventures with the hairdressers began. The thing about most of these people in the parlours is that they never suggest what will look good on you but will ask you what you want. After several attempts at imitating the hair styles of almost all the happening ones from bollywood with totally disastrous results, one day I acquired the Gyan (under a hairdresser's shears) that to look like them the hair style wasnt enough, you needed a beautiful face to go along! So now I needed someone who would tell me what would go with my face - so that was when I came across this fancy hairdresser who supposedly had magic hands. So I put my hair in his hands literally and came out looking like a famous personality :D. Finally just as I had found the right cut that looked dignified
I decided I would grow my hair again, now I let it grow anyway it liked and loved the freedom. Just like many other realisations that occur to you when you are almost 30, I realised that I should have let my hair as it was in my teens and that life would have been more peaceful. Oh, but what is life without youthful follies! So slowly the problems started with hair receding on the forehead, and my "rich" experience was beginning to show in a sudden acquisition of a silver crown. People started saying "you looked younger with short hair". In stead of telling them and myself, " I was actually younger then remember?!"I started believing them. So like an addict reverting to her old habit, I went back to the parlour the other day hoping things would have changed.
Guess what? Somethings never change.
That day my usual hairdresser wasn't available, so the lady with the scissors asked me what I wanted!
The dumb fool that I am, I showed the picture of Bipasha Basu in a magazine advertisement for diamonds.
Was that a suppressed smile on the hairdresser's face or did I imagine it?
Have you noticed that people tell you how beautiful your hair was only after it is lost - as if they never noticed it all the time it was on your head?
Once I was married to a man who didnt notice if I was totally bald or had my hair matted like a sadhu in Kailash, my adventures with the hairdressers began. The thing about most of these people in the parlours is that they never suggest what will look good on you but will ask you what you want. After several attempts at imitating the hair styles of almost all the happening ones from bollywood with totally disastrous results, one day I acquired the Gyan (under a hairdresser's shears) that to look like them the hair style wasnt enough, you needed a beautiful face to go along! So now I needed someone who would tell me what would go with my face - so that was when I came across this fancy hairdresser who supposedly had magic hands. So I put my hair in his hands literally and came out looking like a famous personality :D. Finally just as I had found the right cut that looked dignified
I decided I would grow my hair again, now I let it grow anyway it liked and loved the freedom. Just like many other realisations that occur to you when you are almost 30, I realised that I should have let my hair as it was in my teens and that life would have been more peaceful. Oh, but what is life without youthful follies! So slowly the problems started with hair receding on the forehead, and my "rich" experience was beginning to show in a sudden acquisition of a silver crown. People started saying "you looked younger with short hair". In stead of telling them and myself, " I was actually younger then remember?!"I started believing them. So like an addict reverting to her old habit, I went back to the parlour the other day hoping things would have changed.
Guess what? Somethings never change.
That day my usual hairdresser wasn't available, so the lady with the scissors asked me what I wanted!
The dumb fool that I am, I showed the picture of Bipasha Basu in a magazine advertisement for diamonds.
Was that a suppressed smile on the hairdresser's face or did I imagine it?
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