Lamentations of Going Grey !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If I tell you , I am seeing a few silver hair strands now in my early twenties you would not be surprised right?

But What if I tell you I have this silver strands as early as I was just 13. Yep Genetics played this pivotal

role in coloring my hair silver . Mom had gray from her teen days and has been using different hair dyes

since the time I know.

CIRCA 2000, I was in 7th standard when I noticed the first silver shine in my shoulder-length hair.

From then ,my mom wandered here and there gathered so many different oils every 6 weeks to experiment on

my grays. Each time she tells someone about her story being repeated for the younger daughter, somebody would

wear the apothecary's cloak and advise her on this mystic hair oil with this restorative ingredients that will

paint all grays back to black. There is no shortage for advises and my mom religiously followed most of them

hoping to work it out. But nothing really worked. I really didn't care much about it then, as I was in a girls school.

We were not allowed to do anything glamorous. Mine was a convent school , so nail polishes, eyeliner were all sins

beside boys  . So plain boring hairstyle to plait hair onto both sides. Initially as the numbers increased from 1 to 5 and so, I started plucking a few. But I really didn't remember worrying on my gray hair then, may be i had history and geography to fret about :P.

Then after my tenth,one day I cajoled my mom to get my eyebrows shaped.Salons and spas were not that popular back then.

Though she was working , she never cared to visit them , may be my mom preferred to be a natural beauty.

She was very skeptical, she was like you can do only after 18, but after coaxing her for some time she gave up and agreed.The next day, the beautician while

threading my brows happened to see my grays and started blabbering on her all natural remedy - HENNA. After some constructive arguments and real life example of her own hair with all black being black , mom was convinced only white will turn red . The beautician succeeded. My mom was like Hoorah ! You were the one I was looking for.

From then I religiously henna-ed my hair every 5-6 weeks. The pressure of 12th and intense studies somehow increased the grays

from countable and my hair started increasingly showing red. The red was conspicuous in the light. I remember friends asking me did i color my hair, when we were out in the sun. Unintentionally I have emerged being voguish.

The first day at college, there was a student strike for reasons still ambiguous to me. The second day was the same,we were asked to gather at an assembly point where some senior gave some reckless speech. As ideal freshers we stood obedient though nothing was audible or interesting. My red hair shimmered in the sun and a few seniors encircled me.They were four girls , started my interrogation. Nothing bothered them other than my red COLORED hair and my hanging ear rings. They couldn't tolerate a stylish junior( to be true only the red hair was stylish in me , other than that I looked a complete village girl clad in salwar kameez) ,  wanted to bully me for trying to woo the senior boys . The ambush was painful , but I had a whole lot of experiences where seniors cornered me at corridors and pathways thinking I had colored my hair and trying to be fashionable. In my college, which was in one of the rural nooks of Kerala, a girl who is prettier than the average looking and one who is always good at carrying herself well ( no I am very bad at this, I admire those who are well dressed), are looked upon as someone from MARS. From then on , my identity was that of girl with the red colored hair. In college, the thing that concerned the most about me was my hair. faced this question , Why did you color your hai? n number of times. I really didn't have the guts to ask them why in the hell are you upset about it?  or Hey moron, you will not understand what is  it to have gray hair even before you turn 20.

Years passed by and i sticked to henna for long. And with time, my gray grew from few to many.

My hair actually had 3 different shades of color -black, red, orangish red. In 2010, about 4 months before my marriage, I went to a renowned hairstylist in Trivandrum, to get a hair cut and makeover. With Henna, my hair was all frizzy and dry so i did an anti-frizz treatment kind of rebounding, he suggested me to go with good branded colors than henna so my hair wont be dry and frizzy. Then for about 4 years ,I colored my hair.  My husband mocked that he should have examined me properly before we got hitched.

By mid 2014, when we decided to expand our family,I went chemical free and switched back to henna , this time followed by indigo, because i started seeing aunties with orange hair out here and it felt so odd. I didn't want my hair to look so unnatural and  didn't want that undesired orange shade. So I had Indigo after henna. It's the most tedious weekend task ever, more tedious than running behind your toddler to change his poopy diaper .

When I had R, for almost 4 months I let my gray hair grow out. I was all at home

then didn't care much to preen, I never had to step out and worry about what people think of my grays and more importantly i was immersed in R completely.

But again I had to start Henna+Indigo as I resumed work. Coloring hair is definitely a pain when you have gray.

You have to touch up the roots as and when it grows. And if you want to do it naturally, it is a nerve-wrecking task.

When I was young and with scarcely any grays ,they said It is the sign of wisdom. Not sure if I am wiser or not, the gray touch-up is making me goofy.