I have been blessed with wavy hair. My folks have wavy hair and so do my sisters (one in fact has extremely curly hair). But as a teenager, growing up during the Avril Lavigne phase, I didn’t like my unruly hair, not one bit. I would iron my hair every day but after a while it got a little too tedious. So one day I decided to chop it all off (I had medium length hair back then) and went ahead with my decision. My best friend and I decided to go really short. Since that fateful day of hair-cutting, I have no special love for my locks, the short length doesn’t bother me, and to be honest, I prefer shorter hair because it’s so low maintenance.
However, many of us change as we grow older and that happened with me too. I realized that it was high time that I grew my hair out. So I let my mane grow out… And soon, it grew past my shoulders. But after a while, I wanted that short hair back. Years of having short locks had conditioned me into believing that it was the best length ever. I decided that I wanted a ‘Bob cut’.
I don’t believe in spending a bomb in parlours just for a haircut, I mean it’s just hair, it’ll grow back anyway. I looked for a way that would cost me less money, lesser time, lesser fuss and absolutely no amount of time spent gossiping (because well, there was never a parlour lady around who didn’t want to know when I would get married).Therefore, I asked my boyfriend to cut my hair.
I trusted him with my life already, so I thought I might as well trust him with his hair-cutting skills too. If I looked like a derp, he would have to walk around with a derp. Well, at least till the hair grew out.
He watched about five ‘How to cut a Bob at home’ tutorials on Youtube. The longest video lasted for about 15 minutes. He gathered everything he needed while I took a bath.
The moment of truth had arrived. And even though it was a pleasant evening, I could see sweat beads forming on his forehead before he even started his job. Then he began chopping my hair off. Loads of it, it seemed at first but then gradually I accepted my fate. I was going to have to walk around with hair that might look like a rat nibbled on it. We fought the whole time, he threatened to stop cutting my hair but I couldn’t have him stop midway. While we were still in this process, my flatmate got back home and told us that we were making a huge mistake. Mistake or not, we were already half way through! He cut my hair while watching the video. After a lot of perspiring and cursing, an hour later, he had finally finished the job. Before I looked at myself in the mirror, he told me, “It looks really great. I think you look nice.” I knew he had screwed up big time and that he was just trying to make the situation lighter. I turned to look at myself in the mirror and was shocked at how well it turned out.
He did a pretty good job and we were extremely happy. He was more smug than happy I guess. Since then I’ve let him cut my hair one more time because I am in awe of his hairdressing skills.
I learned three things out of this experience: (a) Nikhil Bhagath (the boyfriend) is a kick-ass person for going through with this experiment, (b) YouTube tutorials are really helpful, and (c) when you trust someone, you’ve got to trust that person completely.
