I have been blessed with beautiful and healthy hair on my head. The only thing I don’t like about it is the frizzy nature because whenever I let it dry naturally I look like I have stuck a wet finger in a live socket and been electrocuted. Remember the movie Ghost and the Darkness? I used to be told my hair looks like that lion’s mane. Oh the torture and teasing I have gone through!

Thank goodness for me, there are people in this world who take hair very seriously and have gone to great lengths (and layers, if I may) to come up with products to ease my frizz. There are serums and lotions galore these days, from thermal protection for the hair if you’re using heat to style your hair to a finishing spritz to ensure your hair looks natural yet stays in place without being a bother and everything else in between. Life suddenly became beautiful.

Since my teens I have always experimented with my hair. I’d cut my own fringe, read my girlie mags and learn that putting lemon juice in your hair and sitting out in the sun would significantly lighten my hair, stealing Mum’s hydrogen peroxide to bleach my hair was also not an unknown thing that earned me a few slaps for messing about with things I didn’t know how to use properly and also using Mum’s sewing scissors to secretly cut a long fringe that could be hidden into my thick plait and then styled in the washroom at school to enable me to attend class.

Obsession with my hair did not stop at my teens and has always spilled into every phase of my life. I go to buy bread and milk at the supermarket and always get magnetically drawn towards the aisle that has shampoos, conditioners and other hair products. Some days I will just stare and make notes what to buy when the pocket allows me and then there are days when I convince myself dairy and wheat products are bad for health and buy myself different shampoos and conditioners with a few hair serums and oils thrown in for good measure.

Like any woman who takes her locks seriously, I don’t have just one shampoo and conditioner. I have different types for my different hair days. The only man I expect to understand what I’m on about is either a hair stylist or a long-suffering partner of a person who has shampoo obsession. No one understands why I really NEED to have so many hair products. In fact I have enough equipment to start my own salon. From hair dryers, straightening irons, curling tongs, heated rollers, crimper to lotions, serums, creams, oils and voluminising sprays, I have them all. And I still manage to have bad hair days.

Then there’s the issue of me dying my own hair. I don’t have greys, just a couple of strands at the temples, which I’m not bothered about but I just love to dye my hair. I love going to the shops to look at what new colour I should indulge in and maybe try my hand at the home hair highlighting kit. I’ve done it all. With disastrous results, I hasten to add. My hair has turned blue though the dye promised to turn it dark brown. Then it has also gone orange and no I never put henna on my hair. This was a medium light brown that ended up turning orange and me fleeing to the nearest 24 hour Nakumatt at 10pm one night to rectify the mistake and not end up at work looking like a traffic warning of sorts.

I’ve done it all, and I sigh deeply relating this to you, I know I have no regrets. I love my hair and my stylist Parin is the most tolerant bloke who pampers my hair like it’s the most awesome thing in this world. From hair masks, to styles that flatter me, Parin is the only one who can give my hair the love and justice it deserves.

And I solemnly promise Parin that I will not indulge in any home hair colouring disasters or anything else. For the month of October at least…!