Taming the tress

I want to write about how dull and dreary life is and everything that is born must die.

But all that for another day.

Today, I need to address a global issue and one that is weighing heavy on my heart.

Ode to my lifeless hair

It’s funny that I am actually writing about the subject of my hair. Yes, the theme does appear to be new and from the offset it may seem like the pseudo-emotional writing was getting no traction (which it wasn’t) or that I am chartering into the world of beauty bloggers (I AM NOT) but because over the last couple of months I have wasted many hours of my life on this dead (literally) subject i.e. my hair I felt I deserved tp oen my thoughts.

For a girl, who had a pixie cut till I was sixteen (not because I was rebelling or I didn’t care but plainly because I didn’t know girls needed long hair). Since childhood, my dad had taken me and my brother to the same salon, where the same barber-uncle had cut our hair and in the exact same styles so I never really figured what the big deal was. I thought maybe, it was a family thing, some families liked long hair others short and we definitely hailed from House Chop Chop.

However, when I did decide to grow them out, I was faced with a new dilemma, that, hair is weird. Mine was neither curly nor straight. I was baffled, I didn’t know there was a middle. Not baffled, I felt cheated by my parents who I openly blamed for this genetic disaster. No matter what hair cut I got, eventually they seem to roll into these weird layers. Couldn’t get fringes either. So for many years, I was stuck with what at that time was commonly called the ‘steps’ haircut. Boring as anything ever could get.

Years went by, I doled out every punishment I could to my tresses. My college life, at least a large part of it went glued to a straightener. Then came the color and Keratin (my ultimate undoing). Subsequently, more money started going into actually treating my hair rather than anything and after a point, I just gave up. First on my hair, the life.

And here I am now, a woman nearing thirties and desperate for long shiny hair. Now, age doesn’t really matter here because we are all in the pursuit of this. However, now I started sharing my pain, over the coffee machine, half an hour into drinking sessions with the girls and I realized I wasn’t alone in this. There was a world full of women (and men) who were going through the same suffering.

Then one unfateful day, I heard (and subsequently read) a strange acronym, which I regret to this date: D.I.Y. These blogs and pages make it sound so simple- take this and that, one spoon of this and a pinch of that, half an hour and healthy, lustrous hair. They had me fooled too. Mt first tryst was with beer. This method pained me, after all, I could have been drinking that but no, I was after bigger and greater things in life. With that started the trend of storing half consumed beer bottles, I’d

Mt first tryst was with beer. This method pained me, after all, I could have been drinking that, but no, I was after bigger and greater things in life. With that started the trend of storing half consumed beer bottles, I’d stow away all these and use them every weekend. Results: My frizzy hair became frizzier still, so bad that at one point I looked like the Lion King Simba.

I resigned until I heard of a banana-honey-curd-oil pack and this one guaranteed that not only will the hair get shiny, they will also become naturally straight. Awesome! I was not just taking wiser decisions, I’d also become a master at managing expenses and felt like I was winning at life. The results were less disappointing, to begin with, but an hour into drying, I was back to being Simba. My sister who had applied the same ‘awesome’ mix obviously posted a SnapStory saying “3 hours with the banana on my hair, but totally worth it”, I wanted to murder her in her sleep by making her choke on a banana (no pun intended).

However, nothing measures to my this week’s sojourn. I decided to not take any risks, yogurt-egg-olive oil-honey I put all that in because well if this didn’t do the trick I might as well burn my dream to have decent hair. So while the result was okay, like they felt soft and all but nothing to boast about (yes, I know one application can’t give results but obviously I was in no mood for patience or wisdom). The real problem started after, my entire bathroom smelled of eggs. Disgusting, rotting eggs. So for the next three days, if you had casually come home for a visit you’d see me boiling water with lemon and draining the pipes, freezing lemon in ice trays and keeping them in the drains (again learnt from D.I.Y on how to make smell of egg go away) and pouring down Drainex every damn day with generous amounts of air fresheners!

Safe to say, I think I am done (probably not, I stared at a bottle of apple cider vinegar too long today). I toyed with the idea of going bald but my dad might flip but till further notice, I am going to stop. Looks like my frizzy hair loves me more than any lover can and my dream to post pictures with captions like “I may not be perfect but my hair is” will after all not materialize in this lifetime. Bye bye dreamy hair flips. If anyone else is going through this too, all I want to tell you is I am ‘hair’ for you.