Trials and tribulations of the long-haired mane

I’m in a hair-segue right now – that’s right, other than the emotional, mental and intellectual ones that happen every week, this one boggles my upstairs in very different ways.

The last time I sported hair anywhere longer than the nape of my neck was when I was 18 and foolish and didn’t have my priorities quite in order. In other words, back then, it was okay to have to spend 10 minutes of my precious morning running a comb through my untameable, chaotic cap of hair.

All that is well and good, except that the task usually followed barely waking up at 9 am (my roommate was the only one that successfully testified to it, on account of my eyes being open), rushing to the dorm bathrooms and finding them devoid of water, hurtling down to the cookhouse and draining the last drops from the tank, both only made possible by that thing called gravity, carrying my well-earned reward up two flights of stairs, engaging in a really quick cleansing ritual and donning the only pieces of clothing that seemed to vaguely match each other and that could be lugged out of the pile of washed garments with minimum effort.

So, it’s bad enough that I now gotta remember to brush my hair, straighten it on a bad day, pin it up on a worse one and even use an annoying butterfly clip sometimes (which looks uncannily Pebbles-like). And the constant 25 mph winds in Philly certainly don’t help (though I must admit there’s a certain sail-like quality -- I seem to be flowing easier with the wind, not necessarily in the direction I am headed, but pleasurable nonetheless ;)).

As it happens in a variety of these experiments, when you change one thing, you gotta change a whole lot of others to avoid the “cartoon effect”, if you will. So, the past year I have added more than just some length to that mane: clips and hair accessories pervade an area once restricted to a couple of hair brushes, which didn’t get used a lot (running of the fingers is all the grooming a short coiffure really needs – the close-cropped men of the world will vouch for that). Now, to describe them as ‘accessories’ is actually a misnomer, cos when the jumbled mass on your head is growing in all possible directions at uneven lengths and skewed angles, waving where it isn’t supposed to, curling where it strictly shouldn’t, and sticking up in bristles when it should bend down and grow with its cousins, a half dozen hair slides, a wrap and an elastic band become essential.

The costume jewelry that follows, however, could be classified as accessorizing. Your ear lobe now feels insecure with just a little stud earring to keep it company. It was all good when your hair was minding its boundaries, but not when it’s flailing all over your face and stifling your essential senses. Same reason why you go and get your nose pierced. And flaunt it till you finally realize that it defies all of humankind’s most innate reflexes – picking, sneezing, scratching, breathing, to mention just a few.

Sometimes you gotta do things in life that make it a little more complicated than it is...It gets boring when it’s too easy...When Destiny starts doing her job herself, that’s when you cut back :)