Grooming Rituals
Having a good head of hair was an important matter of discussion when I was growing up and the care and grooming of hair had its central place in our day-to-day lives. It seemed to me that the women in my life, in particular my mother, my grandmothers, my various aunts and girl cousins older and younger spent a significant amount of time taking care of their own and one another’s hair. There were times of the day that seemed actually earmarked for these grooming rituals and everyday life flowed into and around these moments naturally and, at the same time, these were special moments, highlights of the day.
I think I noticed early on that it was a bit different for the menfolk in the larger family. Both my grandfathers and my father and some of my uncles were bald for the most part and their grooming rituals were very streamlined, understandably so. Nevertheless, they did peer in the mirror and smooth down or comb the hirsute parts of their scalps. My father was more particular than the others, I thought, moving his head to see his profile in the three- perpendicularly angled mirrors of the long low dressing table after brushing his neatly cut hair, as he carefully trimmed his sideburns and fine mustache that he kept for the first decade or so after I was born.
But still, once that was done and he was satisfied with his appearance, he would don his shirt and sometimes a tie, put on his sandals or shoes depending on where he was going next, and be done with it all in under ten minutes. With my mother, like her female relatives, it was a different story altogether, one that could have been written in several chapters, one for each kind of situation that came up in the course of a day or a week. There was clearly no one solution that fitted all situations. One’s hair and how one wore it was important and not to be sniffed at or taken lightly.
The simplest situation was the one I witnessed almost every morning as my sisters and I stirred and slid out from under layers of sleep and tousled bedclothes, snoozing fitfully in snatches as my mother got up, pulled on her colorful house-coat over her functional cotton nightgown, undid her dishevelled bedtime braids, ran a comb quickly through the tangles in her long undone hair, and tied it up businesslike in a tight knot at the nape of her neck her morning “bun” that somehow held itself together on its own before she went off to brush her teeth and splash her face with water at the washbasin in the dark corridor linking our bedroom to the drawing-dining room. By the time she returned, dabbing at her face with a hand-towel, we were stirring and getting up, still cranky as she hugged us and shepherded us through our morning ablutions, breakfast and other routines.
If it was a school day, she would disappear as we breakfasted under our grandmother’s attentive supervision and return to drive us to school which was about 45 minutes away in our grey Ambassador, usually wearing a crisp sari, handbag over a folded arm and with her hair up in a neat everyday chignon that was larger than her morning bun and fastened with pins and clasps at the back of her head.
Her chignon usually stayed intact through her day, we noticed, and she still had it when she picked us up from our school at 3:45 in the afternoon, after various chores, errands and a siesta, though a few strands would have escaped from the hold of the clasps and pins and the entire structure would have descended by an inch or so. She would keep patting it and tucking in the ends, some of which were stubborn, willing them to stay that way for the rest of the evening.
After dinner, as we prepared for bedtime, she would with a palpable sigh of relief release her hair from its captive state, collect, count and organize her pins and clips and brush her hair until it hung long, silky and glossy down her back. Then she would reach behind her head, apportion her hair into three more or less equal parts and swiftly braid it with actions that suggested long familiarity and skill until it dangled in a long neat plait or two that we would sometimes play with. “Time for bed” she would call.
On the days when we did not have school, or on days when we had social engagements, she would spend most of the day lounging with her morning bun or a plait or her hair loose. Then, a couple of hours before we had to leave or company was to arrive, she would wash and dry her face and take up her position before the long three-mirror dressing table. After anointing her face and neck with foundation and applying face-powder with a puff, she would turn to her hair, combing and brushing it endlessly and fastening parts of it using bobby-pins and u-shaped pins, with various combs and brushes, turning this way and that before the mirror.
She would finish up and tuck in the last pin or two and then look at herself from various angles in the three right-angled mirrors until she was satisfied. If not, out would come all the pins and she would start all over again, much to our interest or chagrin, depending on if we were in a hurry to go somewhere or not. My youngest sister even learned to mimic our mother, turning this way and that as she looked in the mirrors.
This process could take anywhere from ten minutes to a half hour or more, but seemed interminable to us. And then, even after my mother’s hair was done to her satisfaction, there was still the elaborate matter of deciding about what was to be worn, which sari, which matching blouse, sandals and accessories to match and so on. And the touch of perfume on the wrists at the end of it all. Then the doors of the bedroom would open and she would sail forth looking relaxed, groomed and triumphant, with a crisp rustle of her cotton sari or a quiet swish of a silken one.
Our grandmother did not take as long to change her sari or do her hair as our mother did but nevertheless she took a long time to get ready. She bustled around the kitchen putting things away and giving directions to the cook. Then she would go to the bedroom that my grandfather and she shared and shut the door. While we were waiting, father, grandfather, us three all of whom would have been dressed and sent out of the room early in the process, one or more of us would run in and out conveying our grandmother’s and our mother’s respective rates of progress to those who were waiting and who would then mentally calculate how much longer until we actually left to go somewhere. Or, if guests were expected and would actually arrive before our mother had even picked out what to wear, one or the other would run into to hiss “... They are here! Now hurry up!”
Sometimes, on special occasions, my grandmother would send out to the flower stall around the corner for little lengths of woven fresh sweet-smelling mogra (jasmine) “veni” nestling inside small newsprint makeshift sachets that she and my mother and other visiting women would tie around their chignons.
When we went to weddings, it was customary for women to be sprinkled on with rosewater and handed a single fragrant rose or “veni” that they would usually tie around or tuck into the folds of their hairdos. It made them feel special and so at times even on an ordinary day at home or while buying produce in the bazaar, they would impulsively treat themselves to a “veni” to wear that evening at dinner. The smell of the jasmine would permeate all the rooms and last into the next day until the wilting flower strands were discarded.
Sometimes, on special occasions like festivals or weddings held in traditional unhurried mode, basketfuls of plucked fresh flowers like mogra or marigold arrived, and groups of women would sit down to weave the flowers into garlands or hair-decorations. Some one once showed me how to use a threaded needle to make simple dainty flower garlands. The more complicated ones where a thicker thread was swiftly woven around each tiny bloom to connect it to a growing band were beyond my ken. The women who were able to do it were obviously dexterous, multitasking effortlessly, as I watched the plump garlands or hairpieces grow with open mouth.
On some occasions, like special family dinners, engagements or weddings, or when relatives came to spend the entire day or on extended stays, all these routines multiplied manifold. Jumping over and dodging bulging suitcases and handbags, I would run in and out carrying messages between bedrooms and the drawing-dining room or from the kitchen at my grandmother’s behest to announce that meals were ready or that she needed some help with shelling peas or peeling potatoes.
My mother, aunts and female cousins in varying stages of dressing or hair grooming would be spread out over our large many-windowed bedroom, usually talking, discreetly getting dressed or undressed or helping one another do their hair or button their blouses or pleat their saris. Sometimes, I would have trouble finding my mother as some of her sisters and cousins and she looked very similar from behind. They would all be catching up on family news and gossip about folks they knew. My father usually disappeared for long hours during such times, and I knew he would have slipped away to the Dadar Club, a few blocks away, his favorite haunt on weekends and some weeknights, where he would go to play bridge or billiards and shoot the breeze with old friends.
I would watch while they took turns before the mirror, sometimes sharing the space in front, opening their hair, oiling it, combing it and twisting and coiling it to form neat intricate idiosyncratic shapes at the back of their heads or at the nape of their necks. My mother’s chignons were almost always admired and she often demonstrated to the visitors in the bedroom how she did her hair. Sometimes, they would come close to look and occasionally she would repeat a step or two.
Sometimes, if there was time, she would do someone’s hair in the way she did her’s and if they resembled her in any significant way, I would see two or more women all looking like my mother from behind, wearing her trademark chignon. Once I ran up and hugged my mother from behind and found to my utter astonishment that it was one of my aunts and not my mother after all.
Then I realized that I wasn’t the only one making that mistake. Once my father, arriving home, beheld the familiar figure of my mother from behind, or so he thought, and instead of announcing himself verbally, he patted her affectionately on her waist realizing in the next instant that it was one of their visiting female relatives and not my mother. I had rarely seen my loquacious father at a loss for words; this was one of those rare occasions.
My Indian Childhood
Grooming Rituals
PRB (c) 2017
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