My Hairy Ambitions

Tresses, curls, love locks, braids, or plaits; every language has more words than enough to help you become poetic about your hair. If I say that the stories about long hair are mostly associated with females, I guess I will be finding only a negotiable number of counter arguments.  If you look at ‘his’tory’, you could see that most number of stories portraying hair are her stories. Well, there you could see some exceptions as well, like Samson the Jew in Bible, whose long hair had attributed greater strength to his physique which helped him to fight the Philistines successfully. 

Long-haired Samson fighting a Lion

 But when I start to write about hair, I can envision some brilliant faces in front of their computer screens pose that ‘how come he also gets licensed to write about hair’ kind of frowns. Well, in this scenario, what I can do is only to make you informed about the fact that my hair too is getting longer, of course with my complete knowledge. It is true that I had never thought about myself as a kind of guy who grows his hair, or the one who loves to flaunt an ‘I don’t care’ wry smile. But somehow it happened. Finding me in a kind of quandary with my disobedient hair, the guy of that chic beauty salon, during one of my occasional visits suggested me to grow hair till a 'something-is-doable' stage. I hesitated a bit, and tried to put forward some counter arguments; but he insisted me to keep my hair uncut for at least a few months.

I returned home with a mixed emotion. Actually, I was happy with his suggestion to grow hair, but since I am a corporate guy, means a guy who earns his livelihood by working for corporates, I was a bit doubtful about the resistances that my decision could have brought forward. However, I decided to go on with my instincts, rather than the emotions.

When I said long hair, I didn't mean 'very' long

But as my hair started to grow, I began to face some problems also. The foremost of them was its lack of flexibility. If I tried to adjust it with comb, some upright hair made my head appear very awkward with their dispersed and unshapely nature. I solved this problem with a deviated hair style, the curly one, which I adopted after giving my ears to the suggestion of the guy at the salon one more time, and after becoming a consumer of a pack of his three products, a specially prepared oil (as he claimed), a protector and a shampoo. Even though, initially my colleagues and friends had difficulty in accepting my new style, my unchanged nature, decisiveness had made them accept me the way I was. So, with growing the hair, I tried different styles, like curling up, curling down, combing back, flaunting the forehead, etc.. But the second problem had some gruesome effects, which made me reconsider my decision to grow hair.

A proud owner of curls

The second problem started with the hair-fall. As the hair was growing old and longer, I happened to notice some single curly hairs scattered all across the thinking corner in my room. With the passing of the days, I witnessed the number of hairs falling a day is getting increased. That was horrible! A kind of scare I had never experienced at least for the last two or three years! I woke up during my sleeps seeing a hairless me posing a threatening grin. My unskilled knowledge in psychology told me that I was seeing such dreams only because my subconscious mind tried to block my conscious attempts to go beyond the permitted limit of stylishness as per the conservative norms. My scientific reasoning helped me to stop seeing such awful dreams, but the problem of hair-fall continued with the same threatening degree.

I was afraid of becoming hairless. And I thought about retreating from my ambition of becoming a free-spirited man with long hair. Moreover, the young chap at the nearby hairdressing centre warned me of the difficulties of long hair. Hair-fall is the main thing, but he prescribed 'henna' treatments once in a month as a remedy, which is his area of expertise. However, I tried to adopt a different method. I happened to see a commercial of an oil product in TV, in which a young gent shows more aggressiveness and confidence only because of his long hair. The commercial ends with a note to become confident with grown hair. So, I tried it and awaited results. But, destiny played another brilliant part. Through a friend, it got me acquainted with Doves Style+Care Nourishing Curls Whipped Cream Mousse, and which was the best thing ever happened in the history of my hair. Now it protects my hair from hair fall, and gives my curls acceptance and appeal everywhere.

My memories go back to my good old college days when I successfully encountered a similar kind of hair problem. I was in a traumatic kind of feeling regarding my hair at that time. Since my hair was not adaptive to any of those trendy styles, I had to think about keeping my hair shorter as long as possible. Being a boy who never had a habit of approaching hair specialists, I was not lucky enough at that time to acquaint with Dove's specialised therapies. The local hair dresser was not helpful enough to make my hairy wishes come true. Finally I asked him to cut it maximum short so that my head would look like an egg (teenage craziness). He did not! So I went home and practiced on my head using a shaving set. The result was something shocking, and was enough to shake my mental stability. I lost the complete hair on a circular shaped part on my head where I applied the shaving set. Now, I had only one option, and I did it with complete interest and excitement which made me a local eye candy for some days. You want to know what I did? Well, I simply went to the same hair dresser, uncovered my head by removing the kerchief, and showed him the pathetic situation of my head. Seeing this, he agreed to shave off all the hair on my head, and that was the end of my hair problems.

This is written as my entry to the 'My Beautiful Hair Story' contest organised by Dove and Indiblogger

A Sleepy Investigation, Passion-filled

When someone who writes about his own (well, I’m using ‘he’ in the coming sentences, hope my female readers won’t mind) personal experiences suddenly happens to stop writing one day, readers ask, why? Because, either he feels his experiences as no more enjoyable, or he might have finished telling every story or experience that he knows. If so, he can start a literary journey through the narratives of his friends and familiar persons. What if that portion also is empty? One option is to imagine things, and start writing about made up characters and experiences that you want to happen in your own life, and that is what you call fiction. But my opinion is different. If you are not mature enough to write fiction, deep look into your own dreams, and start writing about the mesmerizing world that you see in them. By the term ‘dream’, I don’t mean the more generic idea pertaining to your hopes or ambitions about your future. But, I mean what you see in your sleep; yes, the wonderful world of dreams.

So, today I also have a dream to narrate, which I had seen some years back, during the end of my school days or on the beginning of my college days. In my dream, you won’t believe, I was investigating a crime. Yes, I was a detective, a matured, muscular and charming sleuth, just like James Bond. Why James Bond? Well, I won’t compare that character with Sherlock Holmes, because I was more like a romantic guy in my dream.

A series of murders took place in a village, and I was on a secret mission to identify the murderer. Nobody in the village knew about my mission. But, somehow they accepted me and trusted me as one among them. Many of the occupants of the place were my acquaintances from the real life. That too might have helped me to find them in my dream with full of acceptance for me.

I met a girl there and we became friends very soon. During the progress of our friendship, I revealed her the real intention of my visit. Knowing my mission and secrets, she assured me that she would help me, and associated with me during various phases of my investigation, supplying valuable information and clues.

Gradually, we found ourselves falling in love mutually. We began to mingle freely, when we were alone, without any inhibition. I had touched her, and had experienced her soothing touch, her womanly feel, and that sense and scent of womanhood, physically and mentally. I still remember that exciting ecstatic experience which I felt when she put her beautifully curved bosom close to my chest.  Well, let us stop it here; I don’t want to sound like an adult writer.

My allotted time for the mission was closing to its end. I was slowly uncovering the secrets behind the serial murders. But, when I dug deeper and deeper, some shocking truths surfaced. I identified the real murderer. When I collected and grouped all the clues together, all of the evidences pointed to one person, yes, it was her, my companion girl. That was a really shocking finding. The love, and the passion which I had in my mind for her began to put on a very different attire, it was slightly transforming into hatred, disgust, fear, or some other emotion which I couldn’t explain. I recollected the private moments which I had shared with her. The moments when our hearts touched each other, when my chest felt the beats of her curvaceous bosom! Memories about those moments were terror filled, and horrific. But still touched by her love, and by the sweet memories with her, I had fallen in a deep pit of hesitation regarding what stand should I take about the findings.

The dream ends here. But, later, when I happened to see a regional movie titled ‘Avano Atho Avalo?’, (My translation, ‘He or She?’) on the TV, I was surprised. It had the same plot of my dream. Don’t think the film makers were inspired from my dream. Because, that film was made quite earlier even before I was born. And the actor who portrayed the lead role, named Jayan, the first action hero of Malayalam, who fascinated the audience with his charming spirit and excellence in action scenes, had died while shooting a stunt scene for a film, in an air crash; that too happened prior to my birth. And you can’t also blame me for stealing the themes for my dreams from films. Because, I hadn’t seen the movie, during the time when this dream took place.

In Pictures:

Picture 1: Pierce Brosnan as James Bond - A promotional still from Golden Eye (1995)

Picture 2: Yesteryears' Malayalam Action Hero, Jayan.