That is growing old gracefully.

I know my blog posts  always have something about my mother. It isn’t intentional, but that being said, I have gone through half of my life with my mother and have many issues that I need to deal with, so I won’t turn up like her.

One such issue was Amma’s fear of growing old. My mother started dyeing her hair when I was 10 years old. Initially she used a comb that had hair dye on it. Her hair looked like it was painted with matt black paint. Because she was always in a hurry and was not careful, she always had bits of hair dye on her forehead.  My mother Is very pretty, but with all the goshti  she was fond of doing, she looked horrible ( cream blouse with all her sarees, rat tail hair tied with thiruppan (false hair) in to a weird knot that she thought showed everyone that she has ‘thick’ hair, badly cracked heel adorned with bata slippers completed the picture).

I still have weigh the same weight I was  20 years ago.and am always impeccably dressed. I promised myself that I will never dress like my mother and that I will  grow old gracefully. Unfortunately, though I have the figure of a 20 year old, my hair is that of a  50 years old. The grey hair seems to have won the war and I look like an old crone. I love to style my hair in to a punk hair style ( lots and lots of hair gel, but the looks I get from Indian crowd is worth it) in the weekend and my hair was a really sad sight. There was only one solution to my problem. Hair Dye.

I thought I would start with Henna. My neighbour in Bangalore was an old Sindhi woman who loved using henna on her hair,  and her hair was orange colour !  I didn’t want my hair to be like hers. After a lot of trial and error to get a perfect shade, I finally found the recipe to perfect Henna colour.I use the natural henna (without PPD), mix it with a bit of water and few drops of eucalyptus oil ( essential oils are rich in Terpenes and react with the hennotannic acid in Henna to release the dye) in an old rusted cake tin, keep it aside for a day and then apply it on my hair. Wash after 3 hours using shampoo and then apply conditioner. I repeat the process every 2 weeks. I get a lovely shade of copper to dark brown and my hair looks like I have gone to a salon to apply highlight. I do not use tea/coffee/lemon juice etc in the henna mix.

So, yes I am still growing old gracefully.. albeit with highlights in my hair..