The girl looked at herself in the mirror. Today is Wednesday. The blue ribbon day. Yeh that's part of her uniform. Royal Blue skirt, White shirt and hair plaited on both sides tied by the specific colored ribbon on top and a rubber band at the bottom. In primary classes, when her hair was not long enough for a plait, it was just hair parted as ponytails on either sides. Still the ribbon was mandatory. It's Blue from Monday to Wednesday and white on the other two days. There was a time in her primary classes where she longed to have long hair just like her cousin. She looked and re-looked everyday to see whether it has grown. Unfortunately cousin had almost knee length hair or so it looked in front of the cropped hair of the girl!!
Then there was ammamma who would religiously oil her hair every weekend. The girl hated this ritual for the simple reason that oiling meant pouring half the bottle of oil on her head and then brushing that sticky oily hair for another half an hour. The reasoning behind pouring of oil used to be "tala tanukkanam"(Head should cool down) and the brushing was for lice(No Medikar or such products allowed). After that is the washing part - using only chembarathi tali(hibiscus leaves) or some such similar herbal stuff. Shampoo or soaps were a strict No No. But the problem was that these herbal shampoos managed to wash off only 1/4th the bottle of oil and the remaining 1/4th still remained on the hair for the rest of the week!! But ammamma was clever enough and managed to continue this ritual talking to her about the beautiful long hair she would posses if she looked after the hair properly and the poor girl duly obliged. By the time she reached high school, the girl did have long hair, but by then the fascination had ended. Perfect example of you won't like what you have :)
Times slowly changed.. Ammamma grew old and didn't have the energy to look after her hair. So no more oiling or brushing the hair.. Sometimes the girl wasn't even patient enough to remove the tangles and used a scissors instead!!! Even the mandatory plaiting on both sides became an issue as her hair never got dried properly after the evening wash even the next morning. The girl soon outgrew the two side plaiting of school and adopted the more common single plaits during college. Her job and the subsequent relocation forced her to discard all the herbal shampoos as well. The lack of pampering started showing slowly on the hair.. Her long haired cousin relocated to USA and adopted a shorter hair style and the gal kept wondering how roles are interchanging!!! Now a days she is even contemplating about adopting her cousin's path.. Let's see..
P.S : If you are wondering why this post? - I just plaited my hair on both sides to reduce the tangles and when I looked myself in the mirror, was taken straight back to the school days. This hairstyle was so much part of me (n mostly of all girls) in school. How I wish things as simple as plaiting hair on both sides can act like a time machine and take us to those wonderful times :)
P.P.S : If you are still wondering why such a silly post? - that's what can happen to you if you are confined to home, rather bed, for almost 2 weeks with no one to talk to :P
23 comments:
:-)
The school I went to had dark blue ribons too. And recently, I went back to my school with a friend, wearing the old uniform and tying my hair with those same blue ribons into pigtails.
Its easy to create a time machine by just being daring and having an extraordinary imagination ;-)
Dhanya,
Hair styles change during times, even I have seen.
Had a friend in school who had cropped hair through out school days.
I met her recently, she is almost done with her phd! And boy! She has knee length hair. :)
Its jus that she did her graduation in Calicut and stayed with her ammamma. :-) And so the knee length hair.
Oops, was this a girls only need to comment post? ;)
Pinne, thante ee chemmari aadine njan thattum :D Ochayeduthkond irikkum
I had big problems with my hair. And when I say big, I mean BIG.
I found an instant solution. I shaved it all off. And I've never been happier.
confined to bed-home?
sick or somethn?
Get well soon :)
lol! I can understand the situation... we had these sick red ribbons which would never match with our uniform.
In my case the oil murder oops massage was on a shared basis!mom on weekends and grandmom + aunts during vacations.
Strange but now I yearn for one of those massages.
and what happened? hope you re fine now,get well soon.. take care.
@ Ms Cris : WOW going back to school in uniform n pigtails.. That's really creative :) May be I should also try that.. but donno how the overweight me will into that underweight girl's uniforms :P
@ Nikhil Narayanan : Wow ammamma's really have some tricks.. How I miss mine now :(
pinne enne chemmariyaadina tattiyaal tanne njan oodicittu tattum.. :P ochayedukkaneenaa 'Mute' button ;)
@ Alex Mcone : OMG that's a daring act. Many a times I also fancy that, but don't think I have the guts to do that..
@ Eashwar : Unfortunately yes..
@ ~mE : Yeh I will for sure.. Thank you :)
@ jj : ha ha u had more than one nigtmares :) But yeh even I yearn for one of those oil massages now :(
Yeh I am already on the way to recovery.. almost there :)
Still sick?
hey, u're on bedrest? wot hap? get well soon, girl!!
on the post: you just reminded me of my 2 plaits during school days.. I've never had that long hair though.
i liked the idea of the time machine. btw, even we used to wear blue ribbons. light blue ones. :)
these days, I've been sporting a feather cut (more like layered ones) n let it grow till it reached my elbows.. kinda started liking that long hair look too. but then, I went n chopped it all off last weekend. I'm kinda happy n sad about it. well, a li'l more happy than sad, mebbe.. well wotever!
i always wanted to plait my hair to school...but it never grew long enof...i hvnt had hair long enof to plait till date...but tying my hair into ponytails on 2 days does remind me of school....
Hey get well soon!
@ Sini :No hail n healthy :)
@ Usha : Yeh me perfectly fine now :) I had cropped hair in lower primary classes.. After that I always had long hair.. I used to like it before but now I'm bored of it.. Also the thickness has gone fully..Want to chop it off but no one is allowing me to do that now argument being it's very rare so keep it :(
@ Ann : Yeh u feel like having it when u don't have long n vice versa.. Grass is always greener on the other side :) n yeh this 2 side plaits is so typical of school.. think after school we get so tired of them that no one even tries it afterwards :)
@ jollyroger : Yeh I have :)
Good that you are fine now.. :-)
Athusheri, angine varatte, CMey, so, that was the secret to your thick hair! I still remember envying the length and thickness of your hair... hmmm...I should try out the oiling sometime! But the taalli bit. Impossible :) Needless to say, I am in the same boat or even worse boat than you, I'd guess. Nobody's allowing me to cut my hair either. And I'm not sure what sort of an end product I'll turn out to be after being at the mercies of the salon lady either :)
And by the way, I do try this two-side plaiting bit once in a while at home. It's quite a liberating experience after months of doing otherwise and you can feel the wind in your hair! My son adores it (though he does innocently point out the invading gray strands in between to beat my high morale) while my husband gives me skeptical looks as if to say, "No screws fallen off I hope" :)
@ Sreejith Kumar: Yeh even I am feeling so relieved now :)
@ Uma : ha ha you will be surprised to see me now.. :) all those length n thickness is fully gone.. but yeh oiling is good to try.. even I have fully discarded the taali.. n cutting I don't depend on saloons,I just do it myself :P
ha ha I never tried it before until this day.. it was really odd and does give that screw missing look :P but somehow I liked it..maybe coz it's long forgotten.. only problem was that it projects the lack of thickness of ur hair ;) n God u have got grey hair? u r growing old Uma :)
Ah, sigh...CM, yes, I'd say I have got atleast 15 gray hair to date. My mom had a crown of snow by the time she was 45 :) So,I wouldn't be surprised if 5 years down the lane with rampant use of whatever shampoo comes across, I sport a similar crown myself, that is if I have any strands left on my scalp :)
Regarding age, well, you know, somehow I prefer turning over 30 than being in my 20s. People are generally more accepting of my eccentricities and take my judgements and myself much more seriously now. Plus, with age, I have much more of freedom to manage things the way I like than earlier. So, if these are the outcomes of turning old, I wish I were older earlier... haha.
i used to love the pigtailed blue-ribboned girls. secretly, ofcourse.
Because a confession would easily have had me banished from the gang.
same state of mind day it is, eh!
LOL.
and the picture on the other blog.
painfully breathtaking.
painfully because i was to go last month. never made it.
@ uma : That's a nice way to look at aging :) I remember I was excited when I turned 10, but was so sad when I turned 20 coz I am no longer a kid :) Same way no excitement for 30 , 40 and 50. May be I'll be excited again when I turn 60 if I live that longer that is ;)
@ ToOothlEss WOndeR! : aha that was a sweet confession :)
It's bad that u couldn't make it. You were aiming for HO 2008? Don't worry there's always next year :)
hai dhanya i just read this post...i remember you with those thick plaits on both sides and you used to look great..we are in tuition class used to admire it:)and it was very thick.. the long hair dilemma is with me as well.. i managed to keep it till i came here, but now am slowly cutting it off as its so difficult to maintain and thickness has gone..I am not cutting it off too short ONLY because no one is letting me..Hope u r feeling alright..
Well, I can relate very much :)
@ nilu : ha ha now I wonder where all those thickness went :( You still have good thickness so don't cut it off ;)
@ Daisy Blue : he he yeh :)
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