The post below is written by Karma Palden, a freelance writer and it was published in the K2. I knew Karma since college. I have been very much amused with his hair since then. And this article has all explanations. Read it below:
It was a winter. I was travelling to Phuentsholing in a bus. While stopping over at Gedu for a break, an elderly man, who was hard of hearing, asked me with such sincerity in his tone if I could tell him where I bought my wig.
It was a winter. I was travelling to Phuentsholing in a bus. While stopping over at Gedu for a break, an elderly man, who was hard of hearing, asked me with such sincerity in his tone if I could tell him where I bought my wig.
“I’m planning to get
one,” he said.
This wasn’t my first encounter of this
kind. People usually presume it’s a wig I am wearing, and I can’t blame
them either. My hair is big, with tight curls, resembling an Afro.
It’s a mass shaped like a halo, a dark one, around my head.
“It’s not a wig; it’s real hair,” I said.
But he didn’t hear, I suppose, for he kept
asking how much it cost and other things. So when the bus started I was
glad.
My hair has always been curly. But it
was in college I started experimenting. It sat so well with ‘back to
basics’ and ‘nature culture’ I was so fond of, that I started keeping it.
And often people took it for a wig.
Whenever I said it was real, they’d touch it and sometimes yank in disbelief.
I do steal a lot of amusing and disapproving
stares from toddlers to elderly people, which I dually return with a fitting
glance. But it can be nauseating at times when you are low and down in
spirits. Some youngsters think it is cool, while some break into sudden
laughter.
On occasion, some people take me for a wayward
person and justifiably, since our society has their granted say on outlandish
ways and behaviour.
There are even instances when people keep
stakes and of course I have won many bets. There are others, who inquire
the technique to get this big unscrupulous hair. Well, I have no answer
to that, since it is natural and a gene(uine) case with me.
In dark alleys, I’ve often spooked others, not
intentionally. I just happened to be passing by.
My friends usually have chunks of such jokes
to heap on me.
It’s been seven years now, and it has become
part of who I am. To me, it means no style statement or whatsoever; it is
just that I am comfortable and confident. It helps in being me; to be
precise, it could be perfectly surmised in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson,
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else
is the greatest accomplishment.”
I am trying …
Yah, the fashion of having a long curled hair is in. Truly said, we should be happy and proud with what we are.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing Rikku Sir.