The coiffure chat

I made an appointment with a coiffeuse last Saturday after a period of four months - thanks to the impending spring holidays in Bali I'm longing for later this month -  bidding adieu to the pesky frizzy every day wave affair. 

Ever since I was a toddler I was following my mum's footsteps - she had long tresses, charcoal black, straight but a little wavy, shone like fine strands of silk, thick and gorgeous that came tumbling down beneath her knees - I too genetically inherited her long thick straight but a little wavy black mane but not as beautiful and ravishing as my mum's. Her tress tales, even today although age has started to clip its sheen, invite many a lady's envy and leave them itching for the established attribute of a woman's beauty. She, of course, went an extra mile to take care of her free flowing extra mane. Regular oiling, having fish in her diet and applying homemade hair pack (mixing amla, reetha, sheekakai) once in a week, plaiting her hair before hitting the bed in the night, helped her wear those black long locks with pride. I remember, her telling me when I was a kid, that when she was in her school and college days and ran on a tightier budget she could not even think of buying a bottle of shampoo.

Prior to fleeing the nest my mum took care of my locks as best as she could juggling between her work, home, kids, and kitchen garden. Despite my screaming and countless tears, she used to brush my hair everyday with a desparation trying to emphasise my feminity and making a spectacle of versatility of her natural black mane. Poor me - little did I make sense of it then that a mother daughter tress tales would actually benefit me rebuilding my already inherited healthy hair years later!

I started treading the hirsute journey with a great ardor in my late twenties - when I was packed off as a marriage material. The thought of bridal finery only complete with a comely hairdo on the D-day helped me fan my pruriency on tangible sides of life - I kicked off with my hair! Thus began the odessey with my mane.

Invariably I wanted to get the celebrity glow on my mane and drifted from one cosmetic indulgence to another. Hopping to a regular salon and hair dresser did not end my tress woes either. Open to experimenting with different hair products and hair colours from taming frizz to volumnizing flat hair for hogging the celebrity style limelight I forgot to indulge in my wellbeing to relax and rejuvenate.

With a demanding profession and marriage came stress bearing enormous negative impacts on my health. I was inept to life's real face - struggling to keep up to it's daily doses even now. However, I was hell bent on weaving a magic and set my heart and mind to it for a postive and optimistic frame of mind and body. And this realisation made me fall in love with my long black mane once again! The bygone mum-taking-care compassionate times blanketed my emotional keel.

I now pamper myself to a regular deep conditioning hot oil massage for strong and nourished strands, whole egg and yolk-only treatments once in a month for lustrous and soft hair and religiously swear by L'oreal's INOA hair colour products and treatments to beautiful hair. There are lots of hair care posts on the internet available (hair care varies from person to person due to different hair textures) educating and inspiring people to improve their health and happiness. Topping it all is eating healthy and drinking water adequately ultimately helps you with the image turnover.

Talking about the latest trends, I admit being a poor resource on this and leave that in the hands of the adroit professionals at A Cut Above - my present salon de beauté, with confidence.

I love long layers which is very feminine. Maybe this is what I inherited best from my mum - never did I realise before that her gestures with my black locks in my growing up years was a candid coiffure chat she wanted to convey.

The twig gradually branching out...

A rare gem in a troglodytic life

I was three years old when my father gifted me a book on 'alphabets' as convent schools started early those days. Little did I know at that time, or do the wee ones ever ponder considering the age I was, that the opuscule of knowledge in the form of published documents would grow on me, explore and expand profoundly enriching and forming the largest archive of my budding life.

Both my parents went out to work and although I was not their only child, the embryonic stages of my life passed by as a lone wolf - coy and demure. The books made me quarantined from a normal childhood. Books reinvented me - I felt unalone intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. However I had no hands on experience with the practical life. The invaluable social resource was never there in me and the building blocks of relationships came tumbling down for me. This has never left me feeling blue though.

I was more than ecstatic, soaking in the solace of volumes of 'lettered' knowledge that appealed to me more, was readily accessible (both my parents maintain a library that is to be gaped at - maybe I had it in my genes!), and the most patient of teachers I knew not. Many would gag at the knowledge that, even now, I draw the musty smell of the old ones and the inky smell of the new ones that wafts to me everytime I open a book to read - making my head swim with delight. Embracing the regular reading habit in the initial years of my growing up helped me find a confidante while soul searching serious answers in life and calmed my frayed nerves.

Still and going on - I nurture and polish this gem of a friendship in my austere life for the unpredictable days ahead - impregnating my life's slips with wisdom. I can never recollect a single day till date when I woke up to the chaos of the world without my fingers laced on this "rare gem".

 

 

I'm presently reading the Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz (Palace Walk; Palace of Desire; Sugar Street).

 

More on the leaves and twigs of my life in my next blog.