H is for Head Wash Day #AtoZChallenge

Sundays were head wash days when I was growing up in the late seventies in Dehradun, India. In fact, they were all about washing. Sundays, I mean: heads and laundry and cars (if you had one) otherwise, scooters and cows and dogs and cats, even if you didn't have one. You could wash your neighbour's or friend's cat or scooter out of the goodness of your heart.

"Kal time se uthh jaana, sir dhona hai."  

"Wake up on time tomorrow morning , you've got to wash your head." (The literal translation of sir is head but  the inference is hair.)

For the purpose of this post, imagine a head full of lush, dark tresses when you see the word 'head'. In salons and beauty parlours in India, even today, it's non un-common for the stylist to offer you a head wash before they cut/style your hair.

Most daughters got tucked in beds by their mothers with those words on Saturday nights. I say most because back then most of my friends had long hair which needed extra time and effort to wash, oil and plait. Mine, however, was short. I wore mine in a boy's cut because my mother refused to fuss over hair styles first thing in the morning. Plus, if one got lice, short hair was so much easier to tackle than long tresses. My mother was extremely practical.

I didn't mind. I was once teased by a group of boys at the local temple who called me Indira Gandhi (on account of our matching hair styles). Hers was salt and pepper whereas mine was oily black. I didn't mind one bit. Heck! I was sure I'd end up as the next PM of India. I was almost ready. My hair, at least, was.

Sundays dawned with activity everywhere in the house. The kitchen sang with sounds of garam, garam, paronthe (hot, hot, flat bread) sizzling on the tawaa with ghio (ghee). The wadda veddha (the big veranda) thumped to the beat of damdi (a fat and blunt stick used to beat heavy bed covers etc.) and the queue to fetch garam pani ki balti (bucket of hot water) shrank as the morning matured into early afternoon, outside the gussalkhaana (bathroom) in the nikka veddha (small verandah).

There was only one electric heating rod (knows as immersion rod to us) to heat up the water in our household. Beji would tell us tales of times when water had to be warmed up on a chulha (an earthern or brick stove) and how it would take the entire morning for the family to wash their heads and how amazingly lucky the new generation was to have electric heating rods which warmed up a big bucket in just 15 minutes and there was no smoke to singe your eyes or the need to blow on the fire with a metal rod (I forget what they called it) and deal with the soot.

The only and a tiny disadvantage (as I saw it but never pointed it out to my grandmother) was the mild electric shock one got when one checked the water temperature in the bucket while the rod was still plugged in. And when we did do such foolish things, we tried our best not to cry out or we'd get a big telling off and a HUGE dose of 'I told you so' from ALL the adults in the house. And there were a few of them then: grandparents, parents, two uncles, and  an aunt. Who wants to be passed from one adult to the other with a string of 'I told you sos'? They'd start off soft and concerned but by the time the fifth adult was roped in by the other adults, it sounded more like a loud sermon given collectively by an orchestra of upset family. Neighbours were welcome to join in in this collective telling off. After all, a village raises a child, so why can't an entire village chide the child,too? Indian parenting knew no boundaries back then. Believe me.  

I would stand in a corner, by the bathroom sink, shiver a little with the after effects of the shock and very quietly go back to fetch my bucket and wash my head.

Warm water and shampoo?

No, silly! Shampoo or Sunsilk as we called it back then was rare and precious. Most heads were washed with Shikakai soap (a hair soap bar) which claimed to clean your hair and up till the point I used Sunsilk for the first time, it did a decent job, too. 

But, once my older, college-going cousin, Mamta didi, shared her bottle of Sunsilk with us, there was no looking back. Shikakai soap? Please...how backward do you think we are Mummy? Besides, that soap is awwwful! 

There were the die-hard herbalists who soaked shikakai and amla in an iron karahi (or bowl) with reetha (soap nut) overnight and put the yucky looking paste on their heads first thing in the morning and washed it off approximately at the time when pressure cooker whistles went off in kitchens of the neighbourhood. So around lunch time. Head washing came in all sorts of shades back then.

Sikh turbans, washed and starched, would hang like colourful flags from rooftop banneri (parapet). Duppatas would be hand dried by pairs of women. Children would play ball and get a yelling if their ball hit a white dupatta. Darji (our Sikh neighbour) would look like an Indian Santa Claus with his glowing beard and flowing hair, drying in the sun. Young sikh boys would play marbles or stapu (a street game) all Sunday morning with hair flying everywhere.

Before dusk, though, I'd sometimes sneak into Darji's house and watch him prepare his beard and tie a scarf around it, like a bandage when one has a bad tooth ache. I would watch him, spell bound and fascinated, tie his turban, like a magician, turning a very, very long piece of starched cloth into a majestic padgi (turban). He'd put it on before going to the Gurudwara in the evening.

Temple bells would mix with sounds of evening ardaas from the Gurudwara and we'd know any time now our mothers and fathers would be calling out to us:
"Homework ho gayaa? Bag ready hai?"  Is your homework done? Are your school bags ready?

Sundays, our head wash days, would end with clean hair and tired little bodies, for we only went indoors for meals or the evening film on Doordarshan. Our Sundays were mostly spent outdoors or in and out of neighbours' homes and kitchens, but never in ones own home and never entirely indoors. No, sir.

*****

Did you have a day assigned for hair-washing when you were growing up?

Last year, I wrote about laundry on L day. If you'd like to, you can read on here:

L is for Laundry

I came across this chulha recently on a trek. We were passing through Ali Bugyal, one of the most beautiful high altitude meadows of Uttaranchal. It's perched at 10,000 ft above sea level in the Himalayan range.

Tea (Indian style) was being cooked in this pateela (pot) on the chulha.

I will be here with 'I' (don't know what the I will be...but It will be)