To dye or not to dye..

I have always been a true believer of aging gracefully. Of course I am not talking about being mature and pardoning and all that. I am talking about letting your hair fall or gray at it’s own will with no interference from you. My parents did that for most part – my father quite helplessly got to his present semi-bald state, and my mother interfered minimally with her graying thinning hair with irregular mehendi treatments.

Being so miserable at any means of self-maintenance myself, I’ve always wondered in awe at women who always dress impeccably and have manicured nails and perfect makeup. I also wonder at people who keep their hair colored perfectly, but I am mostly shocked by those who make very shoddy attempts at trying to keep their hair black. I have an uncle, who tried very hard with regular die, kali mehendi, herbal treatments, ayurvedic treatments and homeopathic treatments. His hair colored varied so wildly that every time I saw him, he looked very different from the last time I had seen him.

Some of my friends, have been coloring their hair for the past few years in shades of brown and burgundy. They’ve always envied me for having perfectly black hair, and attributed it to me being younger, which brings me to the story of my hair.

My hair had low self-esteem for a very long time. As long as my mother was responsible for my hair, I think I did fine. She did regular oil baths with shikha podi and oiled my hair all through the week. Once I became an obnoxious teenager, most of that stopped. I stopped oiling my hair, because I thought bouncing hair that didn’t stick to my head looked much cooler, I started using shampoo because that smelled better and was easier to wash off. Over a period of time, I realized my hair was growing where I didn’t want it to, and falling where I didn’t want it to fall from. My mother of course, told me in as many words as possible that it was because I did not listen to her. Once I landed in the US, and went for my first hair-cut, the hair dresser “wow”ed and “aaaw”ed so much at my hair, that I realized it was probably a lot better than I had imagined all these years. Hence my only regret since then has remained that my husband was not so awed by my beautiful locks and in general didn’t care if I had any or not.  

All was fine in hair territory until last week, within a period of two days I spotted three strands of white hair, and I am not even 30 yet! I am torn between not interfering in my natural aging process and having my hair colored. Clearly I am not old enough to age! Now I might end up having to be one of those women, who make hair coloring appointments, show up on time and have someone spread gooey stuff all over the head. I would have to sit there and pretend to be relaxing, while my mind would take off contemplating all the impossible things that could happen to my life, have a competition between my brain and the clock to see how accurately I can count time, read boring gossip magazines and learn useless pieces of information about people I don’t know or care about.

To dye or not to dye – that is the question, and the answer is as tangled as my hair can ever get!

India trip

Happy New Year everybody! I promise to improve the quality and quantity of posts that I make this year.

Last year ended with a visit back home to India, where needless to say I had a ton of fun, did loads of shopping and ate an unimaginable quantity of yummy food thus adding to my already heavy weight.

If I started writing about all the stuff I did, I could go on and on and so to spare everyone the misery of a mile-long post, I will aim to make is short and sweet thus:

• Visited Bangalore, Chennai and Ahmedabad (first time).
• Took a few minutes to get accustomed to the number of people who looked like me once I got off at the Bengaluru international airport.
• Weather was just perfect!
• Traffic in Bangalore was horrible horrible and more horrible!
• Cornered several times by my non-existent Kannada skills.
• Enjoyed pre-wedding get-togethers with my cousins and wedding celebrations of my cousin to the maximum possible extent.
• Loved mehendi, pattu podavais, malli poo and dressing up my daughter for all three sessions.
• Watched (and almost relished, I dare say) my husband get a typical madras bashai dose from a taxi driver as he tried his hand driving in nungambakkam after 4 years.
• My daughter loved the attention from the thathas, patis, kollu thatha-patis and innumerable uncles, aunts and cousins.
• Suprised that I enjoyed my Saravana stores shopping experience – I had a personal shopper and all that. Apparently there is a group of folks there who watch out for NRIs and the like and assign shopping assistants. Wondered how they identified me as an NRI when I was in a salwar and had malli poo in my hair. May be too much English to a 3 year old.
• Scared by the utter lack of time to enjoy life by my IT counterparts in India.
• Bought a small baby oil bottle, one mysore sandal soap and a bottle of shringar “chaandhu” at a Naadar kadai for Rs.97 and felt stupid for pulling out Rs.50 note.
• Celebrated a very traditional Karthikai at my in-laws in Madisar and everything. Ate a lot of kadalai urundais – don’t really care for the pori urundais.
• Went bonkers shopping for handicrafts in Ahmedabad.
• Ahmedabad is a nice city – no crowds, bearable traffic and easy parking.
• Shamelessly bought a lovely hand-embroidered diwan set for Rs. 500, then bought cushions, and now hunting for a diwan on the Ikea website. All “thalai keezhai”.. ya I know.
• Provided daily menus (not healthy ones, only tasty ones) and made my mother dish out everything I wanted to eat, thus adding several pounds
• Changed an unbearable number of yucky diapers because my daughter got a Rotavirus infection.
• Found a new hobby – playdough!
• Made sure I packed all 4 bags to the maximum possible extent and now struggling with trying to find a place for everything I bought.
• Bid reluctant bye-byes to everyone back home.
• Successfully answered the question – “I see a lot of H1Bs adjusting their status to Green card. Why do you think they do that?” asked by the immigration officer by saying “Everyone has their own reasons!”
• Happy to be back home and still have a job!
• Damn it’s cold!

Here are a few pics..

Suda suda Masala dosai in amma’s kitchen

Karthigai in Chennai

Ready for the Dum-Dum-Kalyanam

Playdough Daddy and Smrithi eating Dosa at the table

Update:

And how did I forget this??  I spoke to Maami quite a few times and felt like I had known her all my life!