Lockdown Day 32: People who know me, my friends and family in particular, know how important my hair is to me. I have been blessed with good hair genes and growing up, they helped boost my confidence when I also realized I was blessed with equally strong fat genes. Sometime in the 80s I held on to Dimple Kapadia’s Crowning Glory ads; I convinced myself I would look like the goddess herself as long as my hair had the right body and the right bounce.
Here’s the ad in case you haven’t seen it, which you probably haven’t if you were born any time after 1980…
I doubt Dimple or anyone with great hair has ever washed it with soap and growing up, I realized that you needed a lot more to maintain the kind of glory Dimple appeared to roll out of bed with. Great investment went into maintaining my hair. Some ten years ago I stopped washing it at home and relied on two visits a week to Nabila for a wash and blow dry. With age came the greying roots and the subsequent glosses and accompanied with the heat it was exposed to, that did amount to a lot of damage, but my hair persevered. The only time it fell out, like milk teeth on a toddler, was when I lost 60 drastic pounds and a couple of points on my iron and hemoglobin count. But it bounced back, as robust and glorious as ever. Aided by some of the best shampoos and treatments available, it held onto its joie de vivre.
This product, though unbeatable in quality, cost me a whopping 7000-8000 rupees a month
Unfortunately somewhere mid-March, last month in 2020, life changed. Life, as we knew it, took a turn and we started thinking of it in pre and post corona terms. Except there is no post corona yet. We’re kind of in the thick of it. And so my hair strategy had to change. My crippling dependence on the Kerastase Nutritive couplet – a shampoo and hair masque that set me back a couple of thousand rupees each month – was no longer an option.
This comes at a fraction of the price, money which I feel I can put to better use.
I was spending somewhere around 7000-8000 rupees a month, just on hair product and I felt I needed to put that money to better use. I switched to L’Oreal 6 Oil Nourish shampoo and conditioner and with the money I saved, I asked my two maids – who live in Akhtar Colony and Qayumabad – to organize a rickshaw or taxi to bring them to work every day. Public transport isn’t operational these days, so it was a necessity, but I’ve always wanted to arrange hassle free and safe pick and drop for the ladies who would change two buses and then walk an odd mile or so in all sorts of weather to get to work. I felt I could put that money spent on expensive hair product to better use, and I did.
