pun_princess

I come from a family of curly haired people, both sides – maternal and paternal. So it only makes sense that the daughter of a curly haired man and a curly haired woman would also sport curly hair. Well, not always, my baby sister is blessed with straight silken tresses unlike the bushy creepy curls that are rooted to my scalp. I almost managed to convince her once that she was adopted using the above mentioned argument. [Evil Deedee Grin] However, that is another story.

Apparently, all of the (senile and sixty plus) elders were hell bent upon naming me Keshavati or something like that. I am sure anybody with a name like that would have to be servile, coy and tittering, eyelashes fluttering, kya-aap-jal-piyenge [refer to the movie - VIVAH] lass. I am glad I escaped that way; otherwise I would have disowned my family sometime.

I should have done that anyway, having been subjugated to reciting the "Chubby cheeks, dimple chin...curly hair...." nursery rhyme to entertain anybody who visited us, that was the role I played for a substantial period of my childhood. Being a kid is not a child's play people!


The hype unbeknownst to me, growing up with curly hair wasn’t so much fun. As a kid I had short cropped hair which made me look like “Buddha” from the Gupta Age Temples.

When I grew old enough to throw an implacable tantrum against my hair being trimmed, I consciously increased my troubles. Now it took longer to wash my hair, dry them and tie them up. Oh yea! I couldn’t imagine letting my hair down lest I look like a miniature version of “Sri Satya Sai Baba”.

Come to think of it, that is something I and the king of pop had in common in our formative years.

If you think that is it, welcome to the world of weird gross monikers. My classmates bestowed upon me a variety of wacko nicks like puff ball, maggie etc. And as if that wasn’t enough of humiliation, they devised innovative ways to play with my curls. Once my *best friend* in school hid my pencil in my pony tail and I ended up looking for it everywhere only to amuse rest of the class. Another day, some guy who sat behind me, snapped a tiny bit of my hair just to analyze its recoiling properties. When I found him playing with the brutally chopped curls of mine, I managed to slap him and cry on the top of my voice (it was the first time I slapped a guy and also, the first time I cried in school). That must be the last of my bullying years, the standard II because I was whisked off to a girl’s convent, III standard onwards. Well, that is another story too.

I remember how an insect with a menacing appearance zoomed into my hair. The bush on my head might have appeared home to it, only if the insect knew it was more of a pitcher plant and trespassing in those zones meant one thing – DEATH.
Despite carrying out a scavenger hunt for its body (dead or alive), it couldn’t be excavated. I had nightmares in the nights that followed, about some puny insect eating away my brains and augmenting its health. If anyone has doubts whether I have brains or not, now you know who is to blame. I’ll confess, I even considered tying pebbles to my hair and straightening them out. 

In my adolescent years, I grew accustomed to my gal friends cribbing about having boring straight hair, telling me how lucky I was. Only if they knew what made curly hairs not so boring. The length of my hair is unpredictable. It might seem long one day and the other morning I might wake up to find a shortened coiled mass of hair smirking at me. For most of my schooldays, I had ponytails as the only hair style. Most of the days, the two ponytails were of different lengths. Then the era of funky haircuts arrived. Several hair stylists found an opportunity in robbing me. I faithfully paid them the big bucks yet no matter what haircut I got, it all looked the same. The staff of hair salon which I visit these days has a nervous breakdown the moment I step inside. They have surrendered their arms and have pleaded me to stop mentally harassing them by asking them to do “something different” with my hair.

The latest technology has certainly come to my rescue, I can peacefully let my long hair down. And thankfully with increase in length my hair has turned wavy from curly. Yet the dream of having beautiful sleek tresses still allured me. For the umpteenth time I had this discussion with mom last summer.

“I wanna get my hair straightened before college commences.” Mom gave me one of her you-know-the-best-thing-to-do looks which spells NO in capital letters!

“Kajol looks so gorgeous ever since she’s gotten rid of her curls.” I continued.

When your mom isn’t into TV and Movies, such statements hardly have any impact. “I recently had a dream that Kajol is sporting a wig. You can’t afford one, can you? She replied nonchalantly. Sarcasm is my mom’s middle name. I pouted; mom ignored me and delved back into Robin Sharma.

That very night AVRIL LAVIGNE – the original punk princess, sang the following lines from “Freak Out” in my dream, flashing her enticing sleek long hair.

“Try to tell me what I shouldn't do

You should know by now,

I won't listen to you

Walk around with my hands up in the air

Cause I don't care….”

Next day I and my cousin went to the best salon in the city. She wanted to get hair curled and I……you know right?

After the hair stylist finished with us, I looked at her and found a diva sitting beside me, and then I looked at myself. Suddenly it seemed someone had drawn super straight vertical lines using a mini drafter on my face. Thank Goodness! I hadn’t opted for permanent straightening.

A few days back, I got up from the wrong side of my bed and found that I was running a little too late to reach college in time. I entered the lecture theatre, a few minutes late, conscious of the fact that I was sporting one of the most dishevelled looks in college that day, my hair uncombed straight out of the bed.

As I took my seat, a gruff voice from behind commented, “Nice hair style, yaar! And I thought you were here to convince all the stylo freaks that college isn’t the place to show off. Hah!” He finished guffawing.