Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

It all started with a series of conversations over a period of a few months. A couple of friends talked about their thinning hair and the prospect of going bald, or nearly so, in the foreseeable future with trepidation. I consistently brushed them off or tried to underplay their fear saying it didn't matter. It's always been my firm conviction that we spend far too much time thinking of, maintaining and improving/repairing our physical appearance than is necessary. Perhaps we believe that we are primarily judged for the way we present ourselves. There may even be theories to prove that how we project ourselves is in fact a manifestation of who we actually are, and while it may not be entirely untrue, one still wonders if it's worth labouring too much over external appearance rather than focussing on what's within us, the core of our being. 

We apply the same yardstick while judging others and decide whether we like someone or not, based on the way they look, talk or appear to be. We stereotype people far too easily. We catalogue them on the basis of their dress, vocabulary, diction, body language, hair-style or even the kind of footwear they prefer. I remember a friend once looking at a picture of me sporting a short crop of hair and saying, "You look like a butch (a lesbian who is noticeably masculine)." My first reaction was defensive indignation (like being a lesbian was in fact debase). But the next thing that crossed my mind is, "How exactly does a lesbian 'look'?" Can people guess someone's sexual preference based on the way they keep their hair? Similarly, I've heard men with an effeminate voice or walk or even colour or cut of clothes being dubbed 'gay', and then ridiculed by 'straight' men with equal casualness -- like being 'gay' is a disease they have successfully avoided contracting. 

We laugh at people's accents and judge their capabilities based on their ability to pronounce words rather than the knowledge they may possess. Since thin is in, we frown upon fat people, totally disregarding the fact that each human being has a different body type. Those who are fat put themselves through all kinds of procedures and physical and emotional hardships to lose weight and gain acceptance. Once we join the movement to 'fit in', we start rolling down a slippery slope. We can never be good enough as we are, because there's always something we don't possess -- either physical attribute or material object, which prevents us from feeling worthy.

I am aware that these things are easier to intellectualise about than live with in the real world. People are self-conscious and perennially worried about being judged and discarded. I have less of these fears, but am not entirely free from them. I have a daughter who is acutely conscious of her image and no reassurance is enough to quell her apprehensions. Ultimately, one cannot dismiss these anxieties as irrational. 

I decided to put my own conviction to test. I told my friends I'd shave my head and see how it feels. The biggest hurdle was convincing my daughter. She started crying the minute I mooted the idea and wouldn't relent no matter how hard I tried to assure her that the hair would grow back in time. She was worried about being ridiculed by her friends because of the way I'd look. I don't blame her. She wants to be liked and accepted by her friends and being the sensitive sort, is prone to hurt easily. Children can be as cruel to each other as adults, and she didn't want to face questions and jabs from her peers. I told her I'd do it just once, and that too during her school holidays. I assured her that I'd ensure that I didn't look 'silly' in public, especially in her presence. But most of all, I tried to make her understand that it was merely an external feature -- I would still remain the same person regardless of how I kept my hair.

The die was cast, but it took some time to prepare myself. Finally, I decided one Sunday morning to go ahead and just do it. I announced my decision to my family. My husband wanted me to be sure about why I was doing it. My daughter still didn't approve, but by now she'd reconciled to my decision. I expressed a fear, "What if the hair doesn't grow back." To which the husband rightly replied, "But that's the real test of your conviction, isn't it?" I spent the entire afternoon feeling restless and anxious. The appointment was at 6 pm. I found myself running my hand through my hair every now and then -- like suddenly, now that I was about to lose it, it had assumed greater significance in my life.

I took a friend along for moral support; spoke to my stylist and told him what I wanted. He had a moment's hesitation before he brought out the machine that would first give me a very fine crop. The result was most encouraging. I liked the person I saw in the mirror. There was still the slightest of hesitation about going all the way and I was about to capitulate to this 'nearly bald but not quite' look. However, the stylist said this wouldn't help my hair grow back thicker, but if I went all the way, there was a good chance the new growth would be better. Having come this far, and secure in the knowledge that in a couple of weeks I'd be back to this state, I gave him the go-ahead. 

This time he used a razor and doused my scalp with water. Apart from the fact that I was actually feeling lighter -- both on my head and in spirit -- the scalp was also cold from the combined effect of the water spray and the air-conditioner. I stiffened from time to time, worrying that the blade would cut the scalp, but he kept reassuring me nothing of the sort would happen. It didn't and in less than 30 minutes I'd gone from shoulder-length hair to a bald green pate that didn't look bad at all. All that anxiety seemed to have been in vain, after all. 

I was grinning from ear to ear as we walked out of the salon. I could sense a change already because passers-by were turning their heads to look at me. If I were craving attention, this was surely a great ploy to get it, albeit only from random people who'd see me as a specimen, a freak. That wasn't my intention, but I knew from the start that it was a hazard I'd have to contend with. When I entered the building, I just walked straight ahead without turning my head in either direction. We didn't run into anyone I knew and when I got home I was first greeted by my maid whose face froze into a smile for a few seconds before she could react -- even though I'd told her about my decision beforehand.

My dog came and sat before me, cocking his head to one side, looking at me with a worried expression -- that's not a state of mind, that's just how Beagles look! Again he straightened his head, cocked it to a side and continued staring at me. Then he came up to me, sniffed at my legs and reassured that I was still the same person, walked to his bed.

My daughter was away at a friend's house and she is yet to see me. But I've sent her pictures and while she still doesn't like it, she doesn't think I look entirely horrible. The husband, on the other hand, reacted positively -- he was initially worried shaving my head would make me look plumper. Fortunately, that hasn't happened -- I am just as plump as I was before. For the rest of the evening I walked around the house in a euphoric state, like I'd actually done something thrilling and later, wondered why I should even think it exciting at all. 

In a couple of hours, my bare head started feeling cold and I was developing a headache from the air-con blast. I took out a soft towel and tied it around the head for the night and in the morning, fished out a purple bandana and a floppy hat from my daughter's cupboard. I tied the bandana around the head and put on the hat before heading out to my Spanish class where, most of my classmates being the equanimous sort, either nodded in approval or smiled sweetly, displaying not an iota of discomfort or shock. 

From day zero to day one, I already noticed the beginning of growth -- just like a day's stubble on a man's face. I am still getting used to the head feeling cold all the time and the need to protect it. It itches and is rough to touch, besides the sudden, unprovoked stab of anxiety about the long wait to regain old tresses, which fortunately passes very quickly. I am waiting for my daughter's reaction, and my parents' too. Friends on Facebook offered congratulations like I'd done something extraordinary and that refrain drove home the point that altering one's appearance against the norm is easier said than done. 

In the process, I also understood and appreciated my friends' fears. I was terrified at the thought of my hair not growing back -- knowing fully well it was a baseless worry. I've done this, secure in the knowledge that in a few weeks time, I'll stop looking 'different'. But I've also understood -- and will experience in days to come -- how difficult it is to be 'different' and to continue engaging with the world. Perhaps it will make no difference to the way people perceive me. But I doubt it. Every single person who sees me or my picture, is going form an opinion of me based on my shaved head. It will become another tool for the world to define me.

Question is, will I use their perceptions to define myself?

Confessions Of An Ineligible Mother

Excerpts from 'Deliverance' a novella by Gauri Deshpande, translated by Shashi Deshpande:

• "Why is it like this? Is it the same with everyone? I get on well with my daughters when they're away but I don't want to be with them everyday."

• "How will we ever know, before we really become mothers, whether we are fit for motherhood?"

• "Before I became a mother I had thought that this new experience, this new person, would fill some gap in my life, that I would become more complete, that one of my life's potentials would now be realised, and so on. But what happened was just the opposite. Because of the children all my activities were curtailed. I began to wonder whether we shouldn't deduct fifteen or twenty years from our lives on account of them. No going out, no seeing anything, not even just simple reading and writing. Keep yourself ready for fulfilling the children's demands -- that is all! Since it was my lot, since it was inevitable, I did everything, grumbling all the while, and once the novelty wore off, with anger."

• "To whom can I speak of this? Ultimately, only to myself. In this world everyone will say -- you took it on knowingly, now go through with it. But when I see what the children and I suffer as we go through with it, I think one must speak the truth some time. Don't go on praising motherhood -- say that it is boring, repetitive, constricting and devastating, both for the mind and the body. Does everyone know this truth, and is this why they cloak it with fond admiration, praise, love and regard? Did my grandmother get angry with my mother? My mother with me? I think now that she did. Perhaps she didn't have as much anger as I do, or maybe she had more control over herself, but it was there."

• "Is motherhood like the story about Maruti's umbilicus then, something that everybody knows the truth about, but no one will say it aloud?"

That's one of my favourite authors at her candid best. Whether it was motherhood, womanhood, marriage, relationships or life itself, Gauri Deshpande had the ability to be brutally honest, much to the chagrin of the male establishment of the time. In this, her most autobiographical story, she examines her difficult relationship with her daughters, not sparing herself or them and in the process, filtering her own experiences into evocative literature -- the hallmark of many a great woman writer. 

Interestingly, her daughter Urmilla Deshpande followed in her footsteps by exploring the same relationship from her point-of-view in her novel A Pack of Lies a couple of years ago. Gauri would have been proud even though her daughter's portrait of her was far from flattering. In fact, reading both these stories as companion pieces makes for an interesting study of how differently two people can look at the same situation based on their individual position and sensibility. 

The mother finds parenting a burden, the daughter is embarrassed, hurt and shocked by her mother's dereliction of duty. Both agree that the mother hadn't the time or the patience to tend to her daughters through their growing years and was self-absorbed to a fault. While Gauri's book, ruthless as it is, still leaves an opening for us to judge the mother kindly, Urmilla is unsparing in her indictment, not allowing her parent's accomplishments as writer to buffer her inherent inadequacies as a mother whose love she so longed for and who was not just neglectful, but cold, cruel and graceless. She also holds the privilege of ascribing her own aimless wanderings and experiments with sex and drugs to her mother's negligence. Gauri's book on the other hand, struggles to make sense of why her daughter picked out an artist with deformed limbs to be her husband -- is this her way of getting back me, she wonders? 

Perhaps the most disturbing contrast is the episode of the daughter's troubled relationship with the step father. In Deliverance, she develops a crush on him and her concerned mother sends her to a psychiatrist to help her cope with her feelings. Shockingly, in A Pack of Lies, the daughter claims the same step father sneaked into her room at night and when she ran to her mother, the woman refused to believe her allegation and dismissed it as another attention-seeking stunt.

It would be unwise to presume that all these incidents are indeed autobiographical, given that both books are after all, works of fiction. At the same time, because both writers have narrated similar incidents from their individual perspectives, it may in fact leave some room for speculation about what may or may not have transpired and perhaps Urmilla's version is her way of putting the truth out one more time for people to judge, or then, as her mother suspects, another expression of jealousy or childish defiance. 

Ultimately, reading both Deliverance and A Pack Of Lies helps to demystify motherhood. This isn't the pretty picture of doting, self-sacrificing mothers we are fed in popular culture, but the uncompromising story of an individual with a keen intellect and sharp analytical skills who had the courage to look herself in the mirror and not baulk at the imperfection that stared back at her.