Hair, Here, There,
and Everywhere

     One December morning, I was combing my hair on my balcony when a man downstairs shouted at me, “Baal becho baal, Rs.300 kilo. Baal becho baal (Sell hair, a kilo for 300, sell hair)”. Riding his bicycle, he comes every afternoon shouting at the top of his lungs, but I haven’t seen anyone selling him hair. The business is simple. Fallen hair is sold to make wigs and extensions. I combed my hair, collected the fallen hair from the comb and threw it in the dustbin wondering if they could find a scalp again one day.

     If I start saving every fallen strand of my head, they might end up adorning an actress’s head in Los Angeles. After all, India was the human hair industry leader in 2022 making up 88.4% of all exports worldwide, and Turkey was the most favoured destination for hair transplants.

     Whenever I see a hair buyer roaming around the streets, I think of O. Henry’s Della in short story The Gift of Magi. In the desperation to gift something to her husband, she sacrifices her lustrous and beautiful hair to buy a platinum fob chain for her husband Jim’s watch, a family heirloom. Her hair was her pride. A part of her identity. But by selling them to a wig maker, her hair also became a symbol of her agency, her autonomy, and her resilience in finding a worthy gift for her loving young husband.

     It is not just Della. Every summer, my mother used to take me and my sister to my maternal grandmother’s house in a village in Kanpur Dehat. At a place where every old woman was my Nani and every other woman was my Mami or Mausi (Aunt), it was easy to hop from one house to another and talk with them to dispel the boredom. The houses were usually made of clay and sand. Even if the houses were made of brick and cement, they were not coated with plaster and paint. So, there was always some space where the two bricks were joined. And aunts would keep all sorts of things in those tiny spaces and voids hidden in the bricks. From talking to the neighbouring Nani through the gap in the wall to stuffing polybags, the voids were filled with anything and everything. One of their uses was to store fallen hair. She would comb her hair, carefully collect each strand keeping the floor clean, and stuff the bunch in a hole.

     Living with a joint family and women with long hair meant having a lot of hair by the month's end. Every 15 days or so, a fruit seller would come and sell them in exchange for different commodities. Wheat, rice, hair, junk iron, anything would do. A modern barter system is still prevalent in rural India. Thus, the aunts used to buy big and juicy guavas from him in exchange for their hair. Not that they didn’t have access to good quality guavas. They had an orchard in their farms and also a tree in their backyard. But buying something on their own gave them a sense of joy, a sense of freedom from depending on their husbands’ earnings for once. The delight and glint of joy in their eyes of buying guavas and eating together with the kids and other ladies of the house was incomparable, was delectable. For once a month, their hair was not just a symbol of beauty for them. Rather, their hair gave them dignity and autonomy.

     It is no wonder that Princess Ann, played by charming Audrey Hepburn, decided to have a pixie haircut when she was exploring Rome in the movie Roman Holiday. The freedom to decide how your face, body, and hair will look like is not easily available in all quarters of the world. Society always thinks it has a right to dictate what and how one should do with their hair. Draupadi’s resolve not to tie her hair after suffering the humiliation by the Kauravas until she gets Dusshasan’s blood to wash her hair with was an epitome of defiance. It still serves as a constant reminder of a woman’s liberty and injustices she had to endure. If one has ever wanted to subjugate the other person, he/she usually starts by telling how their hair should look like. The prisoners of Auschwitz, as in other concentration camps, had all their hair cut and shaved off during the induction procedures in the name of hygiene and escape prevention. The hair was sold off to German companies as an industrial raw material. If that wasn’t enough, at Auschwitz, the hair was sheared even from corpses. 

     Growing up, the decision of how my hair will look was taken by my mother. To lessen the burden of tending to long hair amidst the chaos of countless chores in a financially distressed household, she decided to have my hair cut at a neighbouring gents' salon. Every month the barber used to chop off my hair just like any other boy’s. I liked longer hair but soon, I realised shorter hair was easier to manage. In a class of 40 being the only one with a boy’s haircut soon became a part of my identity.

     The puberty came along, so did the sense of being different with a hint of pride. Having grown up in a country enamoured with beauty standards entrenched by the Bollywood industry, I began to think of myself as Anjali of Kuchh Kuchh Hota Hai. With that came the notion of being different for the better. “Main baki ladkiyon ki tarah nahin hoon” I was like a heroine of a movie, how it can be wrong.

     In my early 20s, the spell began to break. I began to realise I had imbibed everything that was wrong with the Hindi film industry. The constant “othering” of every other girl, relentless comparison between the girlfriends, being called a “tomboy” and not a “girl” enough became a part of who I was. I couldn’t sing “Ye hai reshmi zulfon ka andhera”, but I took pride in being boy-like because it made me feel stronger and preferred even though I wasn’t.    

     In actuality, my sense of superiority was coming from a deep-rooted inferiority. Alfred Adler was right. Like any other teenager, I was extremely conscious and insecure about how I looked. Somehow being good in academics at school wasn’t enough for me anymore. At one family gathering, looking at my pixie haircut, one of my aunts told me, “Hair is like an ornament for a woman. You are only beautiful when you have long hair. Look at that girl (while pointing at a stranger).” When I was left alone with my mother, I asked her if I wasn’t pretty. She told me not to pay attention to anyone. But I did. And I kept doing it for a very long time after that day.

     Toni Morrison said, “I think of Beauty as an absolute necessity. I don’t think it’s a privilege or an indulgence, it’s not even a quest. I think it’s almost like knowledge, which is to say, it’s what we were born for.” But what is beauty? Who will decide that? Isn’t it a privilege for countless women toiling day and night at suffocating construction sites to just sit and untangle and comb their hair without any hurry? My grandmother passed away when I was 12. I saw her face every summer but never her hair. I have no memory of how her hair looked like because she had to cover her head all the time with the palla of her saree while making meals three times a day in front of clay chulha(stove) for a family of 20 at times. What we think of beauty decides how we see this world. Hardly the other way round.

     After 20, I began to let my hair grow longer. But I desperately needed to know what I understood by beauty. If I call myself beautiful now, will I be doing a disservice to a girl who endured this world for 20 years making me who I am? It turned into a quest. Beauty, is this it? Is that it? Am I a part of that puzzle? What if I go to Tirupati temple and shave my head off like thousands of devotees? Is my hair now part of my religious identity as well? Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. But asking someone else about what beauty he or she is seeing is a tricky question. You might not like the answer. So, should it have a consensus? The quest of beauty through hair showed me a fascinating world. It looked like this. 

     The hair nourished with Almond drops oil and side parting with a little pinch at the cheek by your mother when you were little, yet not so little to like that side parting. The Sundays where you wake up a little late and find your mother’s head covered with mehndi of a local brand, soaked in an iron kadhai for almost two days. The Sundays where you know your father probably will spend half the day in the nearest barber shop with the hair colour painted 2 inches below his hairline. The days when you look out of your window and watch a girl applying mehndi on her grandmother’s scalp while she is complaining about everyone in the house. The comb on top of the fridge with some hair on it and you instantly know who just combed her/his hair. The house help tells you every time she cleans your house, “There is hair everywhere, you have a hair loss problem Didi. Too much hair.” The tiny swirl at the end of the choti of an old woman I see every day outside the temple, selling flowers and Mango leaves. She must have had lustrous hair in her youthful days. A middle-aged man rubbing his head and trying to grab some hair, only to realize the bald patch is growing. 

     The one friend who has gorgeous hair and he knows it, so he never lets you even touch it. “Baal bigad jayenge yar”, he shouts in high pitch. Yet, you do it just to annoy him. The one friend who has beautiful hair and she knows that whatever outfit she gets to wear, her hair will take care of everything. The happiness of people who got their hair back after severe hair loss and experiencing baldness after having gone through several bouts of COVID-19. The resilience of people who lost their hair because they were fighting against cancer with all their might. The loss of hair after having a baby. 

     The infant who is born with some hair on the head and you can’t help but adore it. The one who ties your hair when both your hands are covered with soil while doing gardening or batter of besan to prepare scrumptious fritters. An old woman selling flowers on a cart on my way to my school getting balder and balder each year, yet tying her remaining hair in a braid with a thin, tiny and greasy tail in the end. The two girls I can see from my balcony braiding each other’s hair swapping the stories of the day. A group of women sharing the secret recipes of Henna they apply on their hair, giggling and chortling while keeping an eye on the imaginary intruder who might overhear her divulging the secret of her youthful black hair. 

     The joy of uncovering the head and let the hair loose after having it covered with ghoonghat, hijab, or just a long day where you had to keep it tied into a bun and secured with migraine-giving tic tacks. Someone combing, removing all the knots of your hair when you both were sitting on a terrace on a winter afternoon, eating peanuts and guavas with a bit of black salt. You combing your mother’s hair when she lies down on her bed after a long day of chores and responsibilities, and well, adulting. The hair is tied in an untidy and messy bun because you were busy fighting with life to survive and have not looked into the mirror for 3 days straight. The girl getting a new haircut after having the worst breakup of her life. A new life always means a new haircut. The people who look the same no matter what haircut they get. Your favourite person in a hairstyle you secretly swoon over. When someone removes hair from your face while talking to you. When someone tries to remove hair from your face you do it first.

     No, not Anil Kapoor’s chest hair and that 1980s-90s photoshoot. That parlour Didi who always tells you the moment you let her touch your hair that your hair is in desperate need of a shampoo and conditioner only she has. The desire to have straight hair by a curly-haired person. The desire to have wavy hair by a straight-haired person. The eternal sorrow of forever-wavy people. The secret behind Dimple Kapadia’s ever-youthful and bouncy hair. That first grey hair of your head or beard and that feeling of doom for months. “Ab to daadhi mein bhi safed baal aane lage hain”. Realizing that thousands of kids will never know what having healthy hair means because they were killed in a genocide. The always-lingering defiant fragrance of Chameli and coconut oil in a local bus of Chennai. The roses in a bride’s bun. The jasmine Gajra. All the hairstyles of Tom Cruise and David Beckham. The hair of a person who is no longer in this world for years but you feel like you lost him/her today. My mother’s new shoulder-length hair a few weeks before she passed away. Someone having brown eyes and brown hair. The ludicrous TV advertisements of Nihar Shanti Amla oil and Dabur Amla where the hair of the actresses is so strong that they can pull the truck with it.

     The lost-in-thought moments of combing. The pyramid-like-stack of knotty braids on Sadhu’s head, resting on the bank of Ganga in Rishikesh. Women across the globe cutting their hair in solidarity protesting the killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini by the ‘morality police’. Arundhati Roy’s hair. My father’s having his hair styled as Amitabh Bachchan’s hair year after year since 1970s. The wildflower you picked up just because it looked pretty and you tucked it in your braid or bun, or just behind your ear. The second look you took to see somebody passing on a street in a new city you just moved in because you thought you knew that person by their beard or their haircut. The colour and texture of a stranger’s hair reminding you of someone whose loss you’ve been grieving for years yet the fresh wave of grief has fallen upon you like a torn roof.

     Chopped off clumps of hair of a dispirited wife scattered under the salon chair because her husband doesn’t think she is modern, urban, and educated enough if she has longer hair. My grandfather combing his eyebrow with the comb with which he fixed his head hair. The monsoon wind between your ear and hair just after a downpour. Last but not least, let’s not forget the people who, somehow, always get a strand of hair in their food to kill their appetite and patience for at least 24 hours.

     I am still on a quest to find a concrete answer to what constitutes beauty. Perhaps, beauty is not as solid as a cemented road but like the bark of a tree. If I splinter and shred it carefully, each fibre will give me a new answer. Fleabag had told her hairstylist Antony in a blistering speech after watching the disastrous haircut of her sister Claire’s looking-like-a-pencil-no-it's -French haircut, “Hair is everything”. I don’t believe it. Hair is not everything. What we do with and without it is everything. Maybe I too should start saving my hair.