Was he also smitten by this genetic predisposition to peladophobia? The fear of losing hair? My son calls up from school: “Mummy I have to get a haircut!” and the phone went dead before I could say anything. I could imagine the class-teacher’s stern face looming large over the boy as he was made to call me. He had just been for a haircut, but the teacher wanted it even shorter and the boy had a phobia for crew cuts. “What if the hair never grows back?” A fear that runs through the family! Hair being that precious heirloom passed on to me from my granny. No, it isn’t a myth that all my cousins have hair that almost sweeps the floor! There was no magic potion that gave birth to this ... it was just in the genes. And with great hair came the phobia of losing it!
My hair wasn’t really Rapunzel-like, but it sure did get me loads of compliments. However, as soon as I landed here in Dubai, wagging tongues drove home an ‘apocalyptic alert’ that left me shattered — “very soon you will be left with bald patches”! I chose to call it “rumour” consciously — it is because I could never detect any “bald spot” on the heads of my colleagues. And so began an initiation into this phrase, holding in it both anxiety and vanity.
But very soon the precious strands lying in clumps on the floor saw this nightmare taking shape. I was livid with terror. Now of all poets, T.S. Eliot’s words reverberated in my head, so loud, as if whatever remained of the tresses would soon be blown away…
“With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)”
Eliot entraps a common fear in words and makes it look so pretty. Though I haven’t aged as he had, but the dame in the beauty salon scares me further: “You have lost so much hair. I suggest go for a hair spa.” Thus begins my spiral journey as I get sucked into the shampoo-foam world of hair products and services.
Thinning hair is no longer the barometer of ageism. The reason for the loss of its girth could be anxiety, stress and malnutrition. Sam, a friend, tells me vehemently, “No it is because of the water here!” On our first visit to Sam’s house and consequently to the washroom, I was aghast to find the huge container of mineral water there. When I asked him the reason for the water to be there, he reacted with double the shock!! “You wash your hair with normal water? I am surprised that you still have hair left on your head!” Then came up remedial suggestions like ‘hair botox’, “turban therapy” and customised oil from Morocco!!
Hair and its economics gripped me further, as a frantic call from my brother awoke me in the middle of one night: “Look I need to get hair transplant done, suggest a good place in Dubai! Quick!” With one eye-closed and hair standing on edge, hearing a sibling so depressed, I jumped out of bed and began scouring the net for hair weaving clinics. There were so many and some claimed that A-list actors of Bollywood came there regularly! The search for the best hair-transplant clinics was going on in India too by my parents. The mother was frantic: “I am sure the two of you don’t eat proper food nor do you massage your hair with coconut oil.” Given the love for literature and romanticising all things around us, we chanced upon the proverbial “Darling Buds” — a hair transplanting clinic in remote Chandigarh! My brother plunged into the painful path of getting back his hair! After the surgery, he spent nights sleeping on a chair, the pain was intense and the whole exercise was a barometer of vanity and the agony that family pride brings. As my teenaged niece applies an obnoxiously, smelly oil on her hair, to gain body and volume, I cringe and she rants: “To look vain one has to undergo pain!”
As the years passed by, I got over this rather “hairy” phobia ... and I shall let you in on a tip to get back your tresses in shape. After a lot of trial and error I stumbled upon a solution: Arabic food, loads of water and a carefree attitude like my husband, who has happily embraced the fraternity of the “bald and the beautiful”. Thus, my ‘hair’-loom stands maintained and no, it is never going to be “hair today gone tomorrow” for me!
Navanita Varadpande is a writer based in Dubai.
