Twisted And Mine
My father tells me that the first time he saw my mother he fell in love with her hair. Her hair was silky straight, black, and shiny, and cared for like a princess’s. He recalls that they reached up until <here> and swayed with her hips when she walked. “Kya matak matak ke chalti thi tumhari Mummy”, he tells me.
At 48-years-old, my mother’s hair has retained its glory, and so has her slender figure.
Today, I am as old as my mother was when she had me.
At 24-years-old, I look nothing like my mother. My hair twists like a pig’s tail at every end. My hips take too much space on the trains. My breasts take too much space on my body. I look nothing like my mother.
At 8-years-old, I would bring home a head full of leaves, and dirt, and lice, and the occasional spitballs that the boys landed in my hair in friendly fire from across the classroom. My mother would scrub, and brush, and oil, and shampoo, and then brush some more before letting me out to play in the dirt again. Over the weekends, my Maasi would come home with her daughter who had the same pig’s tail hair like mine. Kahte hain ki hamari par-nani hum dono mein adhi adhi vapis aa gayi thi. We looked a lot like our great-grandmother but to us, we just looked like mirrors. So we played with our own images all day long till our hair intertwined and became one. Soon our mothers would pull us apart, untangle us, and straighten our hair the best ways they knew how.
At 15-year-old, I got used to being sent home from school for things I hadn’t yet found out were things a girl was not to do. One Monday I was sent home for wearing my mother’s kajal. Another Saturday, for wearing a white sports uniform skirt too high, too short. On multiple Thursdays, I would get sent home for letting my crazy, long, black, curly hair down. The teachers would try to explain that I was a distraction, and my hair was unsuitable for an educational institution. I would try to explain that I did tie my hair up this morning but the fucking hair tie broke, and even then I frantically tried to search for another one because slowly and deeply I had learned that unlike the girls around me, my hair was an inconvenience.
At 16-years-old, I left my mother’s house to get an education in a country I had just found out was a country. My mother and my Maasi packed me a hair straightener, a wooden hairbrush, and an underwired bra a size too big. The women around me taught me how to be “reserved”, how to blend in, how to lay low, how to fit in. They taught me how not to attract spitballs in my hair.
I cried as I left my sister behind. In my head she was just like me — a witch like me — born into a world made for princesses. Today she is 24-years-old. She has chemically straightened hair. She has a husband who smiles a lot, and a beautiful, beautiful baby boy, and she has chemically straightened hair. They don’t curl up any more. I think they gave up on her.
At 19-years-old, a friend from Berlin asked me if I had watched a lot of Bollywood films growing up and if there was one that had really affected me. Without thinking a lot about it I answered — of course, every Indian bleeds Bollywood, and Ishq Vishq Pyaar Vyaar. Why? Because it was the only film I could remember watching where the girl with the big hair gets the guy.
So at 19 — I became the star of my own movie, I became the girl with the big hair. I stopped torturing my hair into submission. I let them be. I let me be.
Today at 24-years-old, I don’t have chemically straightened hair. I live alone. I have crumbs of a Bachelor’s degree. I have a love life that could fill pages but no lovers to speak of. And I have a tattoo on my back that says “Twisted And Mine” which I later realized sounds a lot like the translation of “Tedha hai par mera hai”.
Twisted and mine. It is a reminder of my hair, my body, my story. In my own way, it is my personal little revolution to reclaim my provocative body and my unsightly hair. It is a gentle roar of a freedom call to all my witch sisters all over the world.
Come out and be twisted. Come out and be mine.
