"Good girls have long
hair, well-oiled and pleated”
Such hairy logic resonated with my father, mother and
grandmother and great grandmother, uncles and aunts. Short hair was for bad
girls I was told. Either they are bad or sick affirmed my grandmother with a
conviction that a physician would not dare to argue.
My mother had long hair that reached her bottom and my
grandmother even longer and everywhere around me were aunts and sisters- women
with long hair adorned with jasmine flowers, tulsi twigs and with an amount oil
that could fuel a truck for a long trip. Wrapped in a white towel and
twisted into a bun that was only taken off after she saw us to school, she
kneeled to draw a kolam in the wee hours of morning, with Kausalya Subrapabhatham reciting
in the background, my mother was a picture of Tamil harmony and her hair did
everything to complement it.
Thus started my hatred for long hair and equally abhorred the
logic associated with it. I had thick long black hair as a child and every time
my brother and dad went for haircuts, I stayed home and brooded. The
philosophy that anything forced is never beautiful was beyond the understanding
of my family. Such antagonism triggered my love for short hair in all its
forms. Soon as I grew up and figured that I could get away with tantrums,
the first of many to come, was to chop my tresses when I was 12.
A decade later, a highly spirited newly married girl that I was,
when I moved to Dubai in the summer of 2000 and that’s around the time I met Alma in
the Pafan salon at Al Riqqa street. We used to live in a one bedroom
apartment in al Rigga street, a place then known for Russian prostitutes, when
and I first met her few days before I got into my new employment into Al
Tamimi. Alma, a heavily boobed Lebanese girl was the most beautiful
sexy hair stylist I had ever seen. She gave me a blunt cut because that is what
my husband of six months asked her and she was quick to agree with him that it
would befit my new role as a junior legal counsel in a reputed law firm.
I think she had a crush on my husband that time, not to be blamed for it, for
he has the kind of looks that attracted tender feelings in women. My wavy curls were trimmed and ironed into a
blunt cut that barely teased my ears. And as long as it was short, I dint care
much.
There is a saying in Malayalam that translates that the dog’s
tail shall always remain twisted even if you try straightening it for years…and
that goes for my hair. My hair and my attitude are pretty much the same.
Straight and then ends up twisted. Neither my blunt haircut nor my
attitude remained straight. When it got washed it curled up like a dog’s tail
much to the annoyance of Alma and my husband: one of them struggling
to straighten my curls and the other my attitude to their liking; needless to
say both, of them failed.
From the first time we met, Alma adopted me. She
believed she saw a lot of her in me. Other than the D cup bra which we were
both constrained to shoulder, I failed to see, at that time, what we shared.
Every month I went to her for a haircut, and mostly in the evening after
work. Her interpersonal skills weren’t as sharp as her scissors and she
was brooding kind of person. But despite that, she could magically sense
my underlying anger, sadness or bitterness and would give me a good neck and
back massage ignoring the looks of the manager. Her soft hands and breasts
touching the nape of my neck relieving me of all tension marital. She was tall,
big girl with beautiful eyes and thick hair which had different color every time
I met her and I never knew what her real hair color was. The fairest of all.
Heavy smoker.
After six months or so, she declared that she liked me more than
she loved my husband and stated the obvious that my curls should be left as it
is. My husband however relentlessly continued with straightening my
attitude which fortunately never changed to his liking.
Alma and I liked each other quite a lot. I always found her
beautiful and she believed I was intellect on legs. She would religiously turn
the pages of the book I was carrying, and ask me to tell her what it was
about. Trifle embarrassed and but condescending at large, I would tell
her during the course of the hair pampering session, about the book I was
reading and she would pretend to understand, pampering my ego. Maybe she
did. After all, wasn’t it my audacity to demean her intelligence? The silly
25year old that I was, had not reached to the understanding that that a person
who led a courageous life has more wisdom than the promised realization in the books.
Turtles can tell more about the roads than the hares.
Alma would have given anything in the world to be in my
shoes. To be a lawyer- for her was far beyond dreams as she had never
dared to dream of an education beyond the forced religious discourses,
education was never in the agenda of her family’s priorities and more so as she
was one among seven girls. Alma made me bow my head in shame over
my laid back period during my college days. We take so much in life for
granted. Let me tell you, Alma didn’t speak English and
neither could I decipher Arabic save a few words. But there is a language
which love speaks. When I took an appointment within a week or two after a
haircut she offered more consolation than words in any language could offer.
She would pamper my hair, play with curls, massage my neck, lie how beautiful I
was ; masahallah whispering into my ear …habibi fuck him;
pretending not to notice my black eyes or my bruised neck or arms. She would
ignore the tears that rolled during the massage. We women; we strong -she
would utter in broken English reinforcing the kind of language only women would
understand. Sometimes she asked for a bigger tip and most
times she refused to take any. The fact that she never took advantage of my
generosity undermined mine. She gave me various hairstyles for 10 years.
When I became pregnant with Gautam she was ecstatic for me and prayed for a
girl, a girl with your eyes and spirits she would praise, she would massage my
toes and say the baby would have lovely hair which he did. Gautam was born with
a full house head – black curls.
One day, as strongly as she appeared in my life, she
disappeared. She wasn’t there and I got vague responses from the Manager.
Despite moving 15 km away, and to another emirate, I went several times and
never found my unlady, but sexy, twisted hairstylist there. I was
disappointed, sad.. but yet I was then immature or overshadowed by a presumably
larger life, that I did not let her disappearance affect me with the grief or
concern it really deserved.
With a shameless
nonchalance, which I now find unbearable, I moved on.
Soon I found another
salon but it was never the same and every time I sat for a haircut I thought of
her for a few minutes and soon she became a memory. Sometimes you move
on in life with presumably more important people, more important things, and
fail to see the little rainbows that magically touched your life when life was
clouded…until something somewhere brings a painful memory and you wish you simply
have that one small wish that you could have a glimpse of that rainbow one more
time… just one more time.
Last I
saw Alma was six years ago.
Alma died.
I was told that she
passed away two years ago with untreated breast and lung cancer. As I type this,
I feel numb and I feel happy.
Happy because she is in a space which is hopefully beyond pain;
numb because I could have helped… all the riches seem meaningless as in her own
words a last night’s fuck. In a way, I am happy because each day
passed is a day closer to her, numb out of the disappointment of her belief
that dint allow her to contact me. My insignificance rendered by her
ignoring me and not being able to do anything for her shatters me.
She was never vocal about it, but I deduced over the years that
she also spent nights with Arab men seeking solace as she would laughingly
say. It is no big deal, she would shrug her shoulders and say. Fuck
without any meaning, she would say. My philosophy could never
accept that, at least not then. She said the more the ethics, the more the
chains. Life is beyond one’s body, she would say as she blow dried my hair. But
the thought of sharing the most intimate pleasure with a stranger revolted in
me and we agreed to disagree. She once said something in Arabic which was
translated for me as “A wise woman never loses anything if she has
herself”. Strange isn’t, creatures without backbones have the
hardest shells? Never treaded on the doorsteps of a school, she seemed
to be living the fundamental philosophy of stoicism, removed from all
empathy. I loved the big beautiful harlot for all she was. And she
was right –it’s the rebellious spirit within the big boobs that bound us.
Beneath every beautiful face there is a cause and Alma’s
beauty laid neither in her courtesan nor coiffeur skills, but that she was
fearless. Fearless of life. She had nothing to lose she would say. It
took me many more years to understand that nobody has anything to lose for we
don’t have anything, we think we do. During those sessions,
when she chopped and played with my hair, she taught me to be only afraid of
one thing – fear. Fear only fear. Nothing else deserves that much
respect or equally the lack for it. She was a woman honest to herself with no
qualms on fidelity. Because let’s face it, there as far as fidelity or lack of
it is concerned, there is no animal in the world more treacherous as
man.
Alma, I write to you now. This is the least I can do for
you. I believe you are in now a space that is not restrained by language or
education...
As nature demonstrates to us that the dead retain an occult
relation to life. The wine changes its flavor and complexion in cellars,
according to the changes and seasons of the vineyard it was produced, the flesh
and colour altering its condition in the powdering tub, same as my beautiful
coiffeur in her coffin, its taste according to the laws of the living flesh…
nobody ever dies.
Alma remains. Somewhere giving someone or something
a high.
Alma, now a memory, lives in me, in the biggest lesson of life
that she taught me ..Fear only Fear.
I don’t care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to
myself, so said Montaigne and so lived Alma.