My mother had hair down to her knees
This is how she took care of it
My mother grew up in India. When she was a young woman in college she had hair down to her knees. After she got married and had children, she cut it to shoulder length, even though my father had loved her long hair.
“In America, with children, I couldn’t take care of it anymore,” she explained.
“What did you do?” I asked her. “To take care of it in India?”
“My father hired a woman to help me,” she explained. “Once a week she would help me wash it and then we’d go on the roof of our building.”
I wondered why they did that. She explained.
“There, I would recline on some pillows and after toweling my hair, the woman would spread it over a platform below which she burned incense. The gentle heat would dry my hair slowly and perfume it at the same time.”
Then, after her hair was dry, the woman would help her oil it and comb it. Then she would style it.
“Because my hair was curly, it would always tangle,” my mother explained. “So sometimes I would cry because it hurt to pull them out. My father would see me cry and get angry and tell me to just cut off my hair. He didn’t like to see me upset.”
