My long hair had an ambitious guardian in my grandmother. The daily ritual started in the morning with my grandmother applying liberal amount of coconut oil followed by combing the hair with a wide teeth comb and then again with a fine teeth comb to remove nits or lice. Then a center parting was taken and two tight straight plaits were made which ended with black ribbons knotted tightly.The same ritual was repeated without fail in the evening after my return from school. Even a slight movement of my head during this ritual would get me a tight slap on my back.
She used to make a concoction of oils with hibiscus flowers and mehendi leaves boiled on slow heat and then cooled and filtered. The strong smell of the oil meant that I received stern warnings from the school to not use such nauseatingly strong smelling hair oils in the future.
Sunday was the day I dreaded the most as it was the day for oil bath. Early morning I would find my grandmother wake me up and apply hot oil with cumin seeds and pepper on my hair. After this, she would vent her anger on my innocent scalp, with heavy pounding and tapping in the name of massage followed by washing with Shikakai powder soaked in the starch of cooked rice.
The next process was of drying the hair. With no hair dryers at that time, my grandmother would burn charcoal pieces, with sambrani powder sprinkled on them, on a spatula with a bamboo basket covering it where I had to spread my hair. Once that was done, the hair was combed back into tight plaits.
The customary oil bath was a traumatic experience leaving me with a throbbing headache. Once my hair was infested with lice and nits and when all the efforts of my grandmother failed, she took the extreme step of dousing my hair with a mixture of kerosene and gamaxin powder (both pesticides). While there were instant results for such an extreme step, it left me with an itching scalp with painful boils all over. We had to seek the advice of a doctor and it took some time before the condition of my scalp improved.
Now I look at my dull grey hair, looking forlorn. In these days when a simple hair treatment in a beauty parlour makes one poorer by a few thousands I marvel at my grandmother who gave me all those hair treatments for free!
