One evening, as Manju applies talcum powder on her slightly damp face, she notices a wispy clump of hair swirling in the corner of the room. It makes furious circles on the floor, like one of her nephew’s battery-powered toy cars.
Her hair is everywhere lately. She finds strands on her blouse, on the pillow, on her brush, a knot of it clinging stubbornly to the drain. She found one as she served herself sambar one day, and was almost grateful that her hair came back to her, and no one else. There’s something shameful about this shedding.
‘What do I do?’ she asks her mother-in-law, who is sitting by the window as usual that evening. Manju has finished grooming herself, fixing two jasmine buds at the mouth of her braid. They’re having tea in the living room where the divan also serves as her mother-in-law’s bed every night. The glare of an overhead tube light mingles with the sunlight streaming in through the window, throwing her mother-in-law into high relief. Her sides spill out in perfect balance from the corners of her plastic chair, making her look like a stout, heavily contoured sculpture.
She squints as she looks up from her post, inquiring, ‘Yenna?’
‘What do I do about the hair fall Amma?’ Manju repeats, in a slightly louder voice.
‘There’s no need to shout, do we need the neighbours to know what a vain female you are?’ she responds. Amma can be sharp and sarcastic, which endears her to Manju, and makes her as much of a friend as a mother-in-law can be.
She can tell that Amma is preparing to turn this exchange into a long conversation, as she adjusts her chair to get a better look at Manju.
‘When I was young my braid was so thick, all my hair ties would break because they couldn’t hold in my hair. I had to tie my hair with ribbons like a schoolgirl. Even at thirty,’ says Amma. ‘In those days we didn’t use all these fancy shampoos, ma, only shikakai…’ she reminisces. Manju can’t help but sneak a look at Amma’s head which resembles a wizened coconut. Amma’s hair begins much behind her forehead in thin unnaturally black wisps smoothed down with coconut oil ending in a fragile bun at her nape.
Amma catches her treacherous eye and barks, ‘Amaan-di, I am nearly sixty now. At your age, so many have envied my hair that it has come to this.’
Manju smiles politely, although she would’ve liked to laugh.
*
Sometimes Manju feels like a bitch. She is known to nod sagely. Whisper advice, never shout it. Understand in three well-timed nods. On long bus journeys she deliberately catches a stranger’s eye – someone lost, tired or anxious – and smiles at them, as though she empathises with them. They nearly always smile back. This answering smile sends a rush of light through Manju and gooseflesh prickles on her forearms.
But she is never sure if she smiles for them or for herself. Who benefits from her acts of consideration? She also feels contempt and arrogance that she hides within herself, disguising it with obedience and compliance. She often wonders which bits of her are real and which bits are a performance so elaborate that she herself cannot tell where she begins and ends.
Like today. They’ve been making shikakai at Amma’s insistence. A concoction of soap nut, tulsi, curry leaf, moong bean and hibiscus flowers meant to help with her hair fall. But even though Manju smiles gratefully at Amma, she feels resentment rising like bile. She feels ill.
It is the pregnancy perhaps.
‘It is the pregnancy,’ says Amma, oddly confirming her thoughts.
Startled for a minute, Manju’s smile falters.
‘The hair fall, ma, it happens to everyone,’ Amma goes on, as she pours the shikakai into a stainless-steel bowl.
She looks at Amma’s wizened head bent over the bowl with growing annoyance. The manner in which the ingredients for the shikakai were procured is part of her anger. First Amma informed her son, after which an aunt nearby was instructed to share ingredients, hearing all the commotion outside their house, their neighbour decided to join them. Amma has betrayed her. Apparently, the recipe for shikakai was three parts shame, a bit of water and a handful of helpless anger. All of it ground and mixed into a thick, coarse well-intentioned paste.
*
When she undresses for her husband, she begins by loosening her hair after which she removes her blouse and bra, pulls off her sari and steps out of her petticoat. Despite this shedding of layers, she remains unseen, hidden by her hair so he cannot find her too easily. He must first part the curtains that fall over her front, to find her breast. First one and then, the other. She sighs softly with each parting as her hair grazes her nipples before his hands reach her body.
First her hair and then her.
Was it always like this?
Every morning before school, her mother would first part her hair with a sharp comb that drew a white line of scalp from her forehead down to the nape of her neck. Each section would then be braided and folded double ending in crisp nylon ribbons. Only when her hair was done would Manju slip into her uniform.
She also remembers an argument from not so long ago. A lover no one knew about, a boy thin and wiry, whose nose fell like a beak over his full mouth, casting a shadow over the dusting of hair on his upper lip. She does not remember his eyes, only that he simmered quietly, a trait that seemed compelling at first.
They were sitting by the sea that evening, two hours from home, her head covered in a dupatta, nonetheless. In a uniformed row of dupatta and hijab covered heads they became another clandestine couple that people tended to ignore out of kindness, disinterest or disgust.
They were sharing a coconut water, and she had felt both shy and bold about sipping from the same straw as him.
As he’d leaned in closer and put his arm around her, she could smell the rust and metal of the bus handle he’d gripped over the two-hour journey to the beach. She also got weak wafts of his perfume that mingled with the thicker scent of coconut oil he’d slathered over his bushy hair.
She wanted to distance herself from these mingling odours and breathe in the sea for just a moment. There was too much of him to take.
Besides, he hadn’t let her speak even once.
He was dissecting a scene in a movie he’d watched recently, breaking it down in such detail that she’d never have to watch it. And she had said so. ‘If you tell me everything, what will I watch?’
He had laughed at that – a sharp, bright unamused bark – catching his torrent of words just in time.
‘After we’re married, we’ll watch one movie a week, in the theatre.’
‘And eat dinner at a Chinese restaurant?’ she asked.
There was a short pause before he asked her, ‘What’s wrong with a Chinese restaurant?’ She could sense him prickling but that didn’t make her stop.
‘It’s what you always do, after a movie, you take me to a Chinese restaurant. At the beach, you buy one coconut water. At Saravana Bhavan it’s always idli followed by onion uttapam. Even in every Facebook photo, your head leans to only one side,’ she began to laugh then, swatting him lightly on his shoulder. She tended to tease him for sticking to patterns, schedules and habits.
Despite them being secret lovers, the likelihood of their eventual marriage was firm: they were neighbours, three doors apart, with similar a upbringing, the same religion, belonging to the same caste – there would be no resistance. And she felt that perhaps he had fallen for her, because she fit in smoothly. Another pattern in his long-term design.
He didn’t say anything for a moment. And then, as if to gain control over the situation: ‘No, we won’t go to a Chinese restaurant. You will go home and cook for me.’
‘I will cook for you,’ she agreed in an attempt to pacify him.
‘Cook what?’ he sneered.
‘Idli followed by onion uttapam,’ she said trying to lighten the situation.
He withdrew his hand from her shoulder and looked stiffly ahead at the sea.
‘What????’ she asked exasperated.
‘It won’t work out – you and me,’ he said.
She thumped down the coconut hard enough to make a groove in the sand so that it stood upright. He simmered, but she felt an unexpected rage bubble up inside her. She realised that she didn’t like him to begin with, perhaps he also fit into a convenient pattern that she was unintentionally creating.
‘You’re right, you’re really boring.’
‘You don’t know how to cook, or keep your bloody mouth shut.’
‘You’re stinking!’
And so, their romance died. She flung her dupatta aside with such force that it snapped her flimsy hair tie, sending her hair flying up and sideways with a gust of wind. She stood up attempting to pull herself together by gathering fistfuls of hair and pressing them down. But it flew up anyway, wild and messy, so she gave up and walked away with whatever dignity she could muster. She felt stupid and rejected and unshed tears soon brightened her eyes as walked faster, stumbling awkwardly in the sand.
The beach seemed like an endless desert, choking with chattering families gathered to watch the sun descend into the horizon. The humidity had made her already thick mane billow into a wild cloud around her head and she could barely see what was in front of her as chunks of hair whipped against her face in the wind. A few strands clung to her wet cheeks.
Without her dupatta, her polyester salwar kameez hugged her perspiring body, enhancing every dip and contour. Feeling exposed and vulnerable, she clutched her bag to gain some sort of courage.
And during this blind, frenzied walk, someone stopped her.
‘One minute. Excuse me!’
She pushed the hair out of her eyes, ready to snap, bark, pounce. But she was surprised to find a tall girl in jeans looking at her in an oddly appraising way.
‘Excuse me?’
‘What is it?’
‘Can I take your photo?’ the girl asked her in Tamil.
Manju wondered briefly if she looked like someone who couldn’t speak English. ‘Photo waa?’ she responded.
‘I’m working with a foreign magazine, doing a story on Indian women and their hair and your hair…’ she paused to take in the storm cloud throbbing around Manju’s face, ‘your hair is glorious. Arpudhamana koondhal,’ she repeated in old fashioned Tamil. It sounded like something out of an advertisement.
*
Five months after the baby was born, Manju had a vivid dream. She was pregnant again, but instead of a child, a thick ball of tangled hair grew within her.
When she woke up from the dream, she felt the urge to laugh, a wild, giddy giggle that hid some unnamed fear. She crept up to her daughter’s cradle and watched her sleep, nestled between the plump softness of two bolsters. There were no windows in this room, but Manju could still see her daughter, she always knew where to find her and sometimes she felt overwhelmed by this instinct. Perhaps because the instinct was a foretelling of danger that saddled her with permanent anxiety and ever-present clarity.
The baby slept peacefully.
The universe had struck an odd balance by covering her child with hair. The baby’s curls grew thick and heavy, and on her tiny forearms, dark hair sprouted in a pattern like rain. Unusual for babies, but somehow perfectly believable on her child.
These days, Amma took to massaging the baby’s limbs with coconut oil until she gleamed and shone while Manju herself faded away, always watching but never participating.
Manju’s hair continued to fall like dry leaves from an old tree. But she no longer had the time to dwell on it.
Even those evenings spent in long discussions over tea with Amma were now a thing of the past. When her husband made love to her, she simply allowed him, again a half-hearted participant in the workings of her own body. She often found herself feeling nothing at all.
One afternoon, Amma insists on taking the baby to the temple by the sea. It’s a temple of their kuladeivam, honouring their family deity, one that Manju went to as a new bride and one that she will continue to go to, to mark every change in her life.
Despite the significance of this occasion, Manju feels exhausted and disinterested.
‘Today’s an auspicious day, Manju, don’t argue with me,’ Amma tells her when she catches Manju’s mouth droop.
Manju doesn’t intend to argue, so arranges her mouth differently, this time in a firm line, because she doesn’t intend to give in either. She feels strange today, she has been dreaming of that knot of hair in her womb nearly every day. With each dream the knot grows larger and more tangled, waiting to push itself out of her, which seems ominous for reasons she can’t fathom.
Manju notices Amma gearing up for a long, self-important speech and wonders if she has the patience for it. Ever since the baby, Amma has ceased to be a friend and all she offers by way of conversation is unsolicited advice. Manju feels a sermon would be far worse than the long journey to the temple. Besides, if someone sits her down and asks her what she’d really prefer to do, she’d have no answer.
So, she agrees. And her agreement is perfectly agreeable.
They take the 12 o’clock bus that stops directly at the temple – an hour-long journey on the city’s busiest bus route. The baby fits neatly into the groove between Manju’s extended hip and newly softened waist.
On the bus a man leers at her breasts while occupying the seat reserved for ladies. Amma yells at him and he sidles out of there to make place for Amma’s expansive bottom; there is no place for Manju. For a moment, Manju wonders if she looks like all the exhausted people she’d once saved a smile for. But then no one smiles at her.
Soon damp, sweaty hair begins to cling to her forehead while the bun at the nape of her neck hangs like an itchy, useless weight. The baby’s thighs are slick with sweat from Manju’s waist and chafing against her skin.
By the time their stop arrives, Manju has been standing for the entire hour. But the sight of the temple gopuram rising through the street market and the smell of the sea make her momentarily forget her discomfort.
When they reach, the temple corridors throb with pious families making the most of the auspiciousness of the day. Discarded prayer baskets, lumps of prasadam and open packets of food litter every step to the main altar. Manju and her mother-in-law weave in and around the detritus of prayer, walking purposefully towards their Amman’s idol. When they reach the altar, they join a line of devotees, who peek across a metal barrier to look in at Amman, rising gracefully from a mass of garlands and dressed in doll-sized silks. The priest seems as harrowed as each devotee, and his shlokams lurch out of him in an ill-tempered rush.
This can’t possibly be piety; Manju finds herself thinking.
She closes her eyes to concentrate on the priest’s mumbles but wafts of sea breeze sneak into her prayers and she feels a familiar longing.
‘The beach isn’t too far Amma, shall we go watch the sunset?’ she asks her mother-in-law later while placing a small ripe banana as an offering for the deity.
Amma looks at Manju for a long moment to consider this, before she nods yes, and they both walk down the temple steps towards the beach.
‘Not too long…’ Amma warns Manju. Manju doesn’t reply, she simply wants to sink her feet and hands into the sand and feel that old forgotten breeze. Her strides are faster now and she holds the baby closer, hoping she will catch her mother’s feelings.
They cross the road and enter the beach through the old colonial arch and find it swarming with people as usual. There are families, children and lovers sprawled across various sections of the hot but welcoming sand.
The sea glitters and Manju wants to get closer to the shore but Amma grinds her feet firmly into a spot in the middle of the beach where the people around adhere to her notions of propriety. ‘This is where all the women are.’
And once again, Manju gives in, placing her slippers carefully aside and settling into the sand, with the baby on her lap.
She watches a young mother play with her son and feels for a moment that she could perhaps do this one day, with this baby bouncing on her lap, the baby who is unaware of the storm clouds and tangles of hair that churn inside her mother.
‘Is it raining oil somewhere Manju? Where are you looking?’ Amma says, interrupting her daydream.
‘Pha!’ Manju lets out a sharp angry gust of irritation. And before she can stop herself, she chases her irritation with, ‘Can’t you let me have a thought to myself?’ Immediately, Manju is scared – she has allowed her pretence to drop and unwittingly shown herself to Amma for the first time.
She looks away quickly, staring at her slippers lined up neatly next to her.
‘Go get me sundal,’ Amma says as though she hasn’t heard Manju at all.
Manju is startled, first by her own bold anger and then by Amma’s cold response to it. She realises she has been put in her place. Her anger is irrelevant here, it will never be acknowledged.
To save face she gets up quickly, handing Amma the baby and then, dusting the sand off her sari for something to do. But her anger continues to swell within her, it has had nowhere to go.
She strides off in search of the boiled snack trudging in shame and irritation with heavy, undignified steps through sand that only makes her sink in further. This walk and this particular mixture of feelings is reminiscent of another evening on the same beach. On a whim, she stops for a moment, hesitantly loosens her bun, but eventually yanks off the hair tie that has choked her hair into submission. She doesn’t look back to see if Amma is watching, in fact she’s quite certain that she is watching and somehow this only emboldens Manju. She shakes her head to toss her hair, waiting for the wind to catch each loose strand and gather them all together so that her locks whip her face.
For a time, the sand, the sea and the hot air around her turn her into one of her old selves as her hair rises, billows and finally drowns her within itself.
*
The tenth issue of a photography magazine published in Stockholm, carries a black and white photograph of Manju.
Or some version of her.
A storm cloud of hair surrounds her face covering it almost entirely, a few tendrils snake into her half-parted lips. Manju looks as if she is being swallowed by her own hair. All one can see through this profusion of undisciplined curls are a pair of wet, angry eyes.
The caption under the photograph reads: Glorious.
Manju has never seen the photograph.
*
Meera Ganapathi is a writer and editor based in Mumbai. She writes books for children, contributes essays on culture to various publications including Scroll and Juggernaut and runs an independent publication called The Soup.