Khushboo Jain
‘I wish I could do it. It needs so much strength and courage. I don’t have it’, stated a random stranger, admirably pointing at my shaved head. ‘Well, you just need a barber to do this, not really courage’, I responded. And we both chuckled.
When I started writing this piece, I wanted to focus on how random strangers, almost always young women, have spoken about courage to me, especially in relation to my shaved head.
I remember the first time a stranger had complimented my thick, voluminous hair. A child, probably 11 years old at the time, I was at a neighbourhood grocery store. The woman could not stop admiring my hair. My mother had worked really hard on them, oiling them regularly, shampooing them with herbs, washing them herself. Like the volume of my hair, my life too was thick with responsibilities. The eldest daughter amongst four siblings, responsibilities had come a tad too early. And I had naturally taken to the role.
Then, youth came knocking. The texture of my hair turned into free-flowing curls. From Nepal, we had moved to India, and that too, to the state of Haryana. Whilst I was still reeling under cultural shock, the rigid patriarchal structures of our community wanted us girls to be safely preserved in Godrej almirahs (considered to be the safest by Baniyas!) until we were given away in marriage along with a huge dowry for good riddance.
That’s probably when my hair turned into tangles to find ways of escaping their hold. After every struggle for freedom, I would get a haircut to charge myself up.
Yet, I could not escape fully. A few years down the line, as I got tied in an arranged marriage, my hair got tied into a bun. And boy, how I loved decorating them with orchids and gerberas. After the first few years of misadventures that included depression, a heavy suicidal mindset, and a miscarriage, I decided to straighten my life. And guess what? I also got my hair straightened.
I couldn’t go much further with this plan and chopped the ends off to make some room to breathe. I was suffocating, and things needed to change. As I ventured into feminist understanding and situating it in my own life, I also sported a red hair look! Personal is political became the new guiding light.
I finally wanted to break out of the golden cage. That’s when I coloured my hair gold, too. But it dragged for some more time. My hair, abused by heavy chemicals, was limp, brittle, unmanageable and damaged – quite like my marriage.
Nine years had passed of being in a perpetually unhappy state. Of trying and nothing working. Life only getting worse by each passing day. Both of us did not deserve that. Both of us needed a second chance at life. Breaking the vicious cycle of trying to make the marriage work for us, for the family, for society, falling apart and starting all over again, I opted out.
It was time to do away with all the damaged ends and start afresh. Like my life, my hair got a makeover too. The long and damaged parts of it were chopped off retaining the healthy roots and sporting very short hair, popularly called the ‘boy-cut’!
The world was probably not as shaken by me walking out of my marriage as it were by chopping my hair off. It became very personal for many friends and family. But that’s a story for another essay, another time.
No points for guessing, it was not easy. Starting from scratch. Reconstructing, rebuilding my life. Some well-wishers congratulated me for finally being free. But here I was, struggling with being free. I had no wherewithal to understand what free means, what freedom is, how to use it, shape it. What to do with it?
I made wrong choices, stumbled, picked myself up and hit the repeat button again. Those wrong choices eventually helped lead to some reflective self-work and on an alternative, spiritual path. Slowly, I developed my own understanding of what freedom was to me and how I wanted to shape it in my life. I started to find peace, a state of calm, contentment. That’s when I went and got my head shaved. Because that was just what I wanted. Did it call for courage at all then? I don’t think so.
I seem to relate with that person with shaved head in the mirror more than any of her older selves in the past. And that’s where my core strength and courage are at – in a space of peace and calm. A space of just being.
Have I required courage to take those decision, arrive at where I am today? As I had sat in the salon contemplating, Sylvie, my hair stylist back then had commented, ‘you did not take so long to decide when you coloured them red, why are you thinking so much to chop them off. You can always grow them back in a year!’. Before thinking twice, I had given my consent. Did that take courage? Honestly, I do not know.
This essay was written by Khushboo Jain in response to the prompt, ‘An act of quiet courage’ in the Ochre Sky Memoir writing workshop facilitated by Natasha Badhwar and Raju Tai.
