I am a 23-year-old working woman who loves to dress up and be up-to-date with fashion and beauty trends– but I refuse to colour my grey hair.
You might think that at my age I should be open to trying all things (which I am), and just colour the hair if I am so bothered with them. However, that is not the case. I am not as bothered by my grey hair which spread across my scalp and shine bright under the sun and especially in pictures, as much as people around me are.
How many times does a girl need to hear that she has grey hair? I know!
A hairdresser would worryingly point out to me that I have grey hair to which I usually respond, “Ek nahi hai, kaafi hain (I don’t just have one, I have plenty).” Sometimes he even gives a great offer to colour my hair, “not balayage, but streaks,” as he would say. Not that I know what the first word means, but I politely decline.
The middle-aged lady who comes home to oil massage my hair, would just pluck one out of the root and hand it over to me while I am still recovering from the shock/pain with anger penting up in me and say, “aapka safaed baal nikaal diya.” After much debate and discussion we settled on a middle ground that she will not do it again-not because I don’t like it-because if she plucks one, two will grow in its place and she doesn’t want that!
My colleagues point them out, my friends point them out and heck, my grandparents also point them out.
Don’t we have bigger problems at hand, people?
I have been told more about my grey hair than my slouching problem and I am kind of done. So I take to writing and announce to people that I am not getting my hair coloured because you think it is not my age to flaunt grey hair.
My father cannot contain his shock every time I tell him that I might never colour my hair. He thinks I am compromising on beauty! My favourite professors in college had grey hair, not just women, even men and trust me, none of them were above 35-40. I want to be like them. I might not be a big fan of Neha Dhupia, but the way that woman flaunts her streak of grey hair is commendable. I want to own that confidence.
My siblings, both men, too have grey hair (don’t know if they hear about it as often as I do) and we have come to understand that this might be a genetic thing—to grey prematurely. But who will explain this to people who are so “solution oriented” that they don’t want to hear our reasoning.
I am comfortable in my own skin (and hair). I am a 23-year-old pimple-faced, grey haired girl who is not going to do anything about it!
Image credits: Instagram, Lia Haydon & Neha Dhupia; Times Of India; Supriya Pathak
