CROWNING GLORY

Let me share with you my "love affair" with my hair.

OK...it's only about the hair on my HEAD, Full stop. Lest you people let your imaginations run wild....

My love affair with my hair goes as far back to my primary school days. I could still remember very vividly that my dad would sit me down on a stool and plastered my hair with "Tancho" hair wax ( those green sticky stuff ) and would meticulously part my hair on the side and smoothened my hair with a fine-toothed comb before I was sent to school. It was so neat and "stiff " that the hair will stay in place despite all the rough play during school recess time! Even the houseflies would slip and fall on my hair then.

We do not have fancy unisex hair salons during those days and all our hairdressing needs are met by the wandering barber with a briefcase attached to his bicycle who made house calls. The only part we love about this barber visits is that a free pencil would be given to us as a gift if we stayed still enough during the entire hair cutting process.

The main disadvantage was that he only knew one "style" of hair design...despite the many photographs of Elvis, Beatles etc. we showed to motivate him otherwise.

As I progressed to secondary school, I had the previlege to have my hair done in a Indian barber shop. These are shops with swivel high chairs and pictures of famous Bollywood actors plastered on the walls...and lots of "combat" comics and old issues of "MovieNews" for our reading pleasure while we waited out our turn.

Yes..these shops were better than the wandering one man barber in terms of "repertiore" when it comes to the various hairstyles one could choose from. However, the setback is that one must not visit the barber immediately after lunch or you will have to smell "curried" fingers as the barber handled your heads and faces! Of course the other restriction then was from my school authorities (Christian Missionary School) which only allowed the standard "4 by 2" style....Now, what is this "4 by 2"? It has nothing to do with mathematics, but it means no hair should extend beyond 4 fingers width from the back shirt collar, and 2 finger width above the ears! You can imagine how we looked then with "mud guards" over our ears.

During the 70s, the trend was long hair and we students will have to work around the school rules to stay "hip and cool". This was where we became very creative with combing techniques and the use of hair grooming products whenever there was a hair check by the discipline teachers!

My love affair with my hair then is to keep it long, no matter what or how "ugly" it may be. But the surprising part was once I left the confine of school, keeping my hair long was no more a fixation. I guess at that time, it was the rebellious nature in me to "break rules". And once I had the freedom to do whatever I liked with my hair, I kept it to a short and neat style throughout my early working life. No big deal then!

Lately, for the past 2 years or so when I had less hair to "fall in love with", I changed my hairstyle again. I adopted a "crew cut" and I am very comfortable with it so far. Less maintenance and more savings on hair grooming products during these hard economical times.

So you people out there....love your hair if you still have a lots of it...but don't cry too nuch if you have less of it to love. According to the latest fashion magazines "crew cuts" is the in thing and do not be surprised if there are more than one "botak" (young and old)around when you wall into a meeting room next time!!