Ageing And Dyeing

I was, I think, in my late 30s when streaks of grey appeared on my head. I welcomed them with open arms. I thought it was a good idea to age gracefully with pride, just like one of my professors whom I admired greatly during my college days.

Two years later, however, my whole life turned upside down. I was now in a different career and a different industry. I could no longer afford to remain inwardly drawn as my job profile involved dealing with people. For the sake of my career, I had to unlearn a lot of things that were ingrained in me since childhood.  It was painful initially as I had to constantly worry about what others thought about me and adapt myself accordingly. Earlier, the only qualities that mattered to me were intellect, knowledge, depth of feelings and emotions, and internal beauty. But now, it was all about superficial beauty, pleasing exteriors, memorable appearances, and making great first impressions and all this obviously included looking youthful.

Every organization has some unwritten, tacit rules that they expect their employees to follow instinctively. Those employees who understand this do well in their careers and those who don’t either stagnate or keep getting fired for what they perceive as’flimsy reasons.’

I realized this the harder way after a lot of struggle. It was during the toughest part of my life when I discovered that being well-groomed from outside is the best way to demonstrate to the whole world your optimism, strength and courage and positive things happen only to people who look positive. Looking positive outside actually tends to work backwards too and before you realize it, your interior too begins to feel cosy, warm, and comfortable…

There are certain things, of course that you can’t control, your facial contours, the wrinkles, skin color, hair texture, etc, but there are lots of other things that you can do to embellish what you’ve got.

Apart from cosmetics (thank God, you don’t need to use them heavily in office) and perfumes, hair coloring is an absolute must for the grey heads.

If you look at this positively, it’s, I guess, a question of choosing between looking what you are and what you want to be.

I began initially with mehndi as it was a low-cost option without any side-effects. But the problem with mehndi is that it produces an unnatural orangish stain which doesn’t look nice. So I soon graduated to chemical dyes. I tried many brands,  Garnier, Revlon, Godrej, etc. For some time, at least, they fulfilled the purpose for which I used them.

A few years later, I had to return to mehndi as my hair had got severely damaged. This time, I used Indigo powder paste also each time after using mehndi to change orange color to natural black brown. During this period, I used many other things too, such as amla and shikakai powders, egg, curd, etc. My hair loved it absolutely! I could see that from the significant improvement in both length and thickness of my hair.

But now there were new challenges. I no longer had enough time for myself because of long working hours. It was not possible to spend weekends with my hair slathered with dyes for 4-6 hours. In winters, it was much more difficult because of my chronic allergic rhinitis problems.

Two months ago, my husband gifted me a few sachets of a ‘natural’dye that I had never heard of earlier (Noni Black Hair Magic). He bought them for me from the International Trade Fair at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi. He said,”Try these. I saw a lot of people buying them today. They are claiming that this is safe and  will give your hair the color you want in just 10 minutes. All you have to do is massage it into your hair like a shampoo and wash it off after 10 minutes.”

I tried it out that evening itself with a lot of misgivings as it seemed to be a Chinese product and my experience with Chinese products has not always been a very happy one.

I was pleasantly surprised as it worked out the way it was supposed to. It did the coloring without spoiling my hair.

Here are the pics…

1. Starting point

2. Dyeing with Noni Black Hair Magic (I used 2 sachets. They come with gloves).

3. I emptied the whole lot into my hair with glove-covered hands.

4. Finally, 30 minutes later, after washing and rinsing with water, white and grey turned to black…

5. Here I am, in office, the next day with several years knocked off my age…

 

Today, as I share my happiness with all my dear readers about being joyfully alive, I would like to conclude by saying that every challenge gives us an opportunity to achieve what we have come to this world for and you just have to accept it with dignity.

In case you need more information about this product, look at this pic of the carton…