The Rapunzel Paradigm

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel,

Let down your hair.”

Hearing the call, Rapunzel lets down her braids and assists the old witch to climb up the tower. Making the villains proud at the global level, the evil witch indulges in lots of ill doing and couple-splitting, ultimately to meet a grave end. Finally, the beautiful Rapunzel and her Prince charming overcome every obstacle similar to fairy tale power couples and live happily ever after.

The delicate damsel in distress waltzes through the night. Her soft golden train of never-ending hair move through the fine breeze forming delightful patterns.

And here I am, reminding you of the gorgeous Rapunzel, letting down my hair, only to de-tangle painful knots out of my ever so oily scalp!

So my jet black shoulder length tresses have a complete world and brain of their own. All those grandma tips, homemade solutions, infinite oil massages or the expensive pocket-unfriendly hair spas go for a toss when my hair decide to play pranks on me. If they don’t feel like it, they will still continue to resemble an oil factory! Sob.

Alternatively, the days I am bound to stay home for a long lazy weekend, that is precisely when my lady locks come to life and gain a bouncy revived texture. I could almost star in a quick hair commercial, flipping my face left to right in extreme slow motion with a ‘la-la-la; la-la’ tune on my lips!

With every approaching morning, emerges a glint of hope to glance at the astrology column of the newspaper. Spare us the ‘you-are-accident-prone-today’ prediction or ‘you-are-about-to-meet-the-love-of-your-life’ prophecy! All we want to know is how is our hair day going to be like. Is it full of soft curls all the way down our waist or is it going to be full of sea waves that refuse to co-operate with any hairdo. Are they going to remain silky straight so we can team them up with a preppy look, for once?

Eventually it does not really matter. We end up admiring and drooling over somebody else’s locks, curls or razor straight look anyway, pretty ignorant of the beautiful fall of those flicks meeting the edge of our brow.

I guess that is the thing about Rapunzel, she was happy with what she had irrespective of the colour and the length and the texture and the - oh that’s not right days. Besides, no competition except for the old witch who must have hoisted a nest full of twigs up her head.

The bottom line is, although our hairstyles and hairdos dominate an intensely large part of our appearances, maybe it is okay to love the greasy bit for a day or dry Tundra which is thirsting for coconut oil.

Raise a toast to the hair that slays in their own tune!