Anyone who knows me even remotely well would not be wrong in associating me with long hair. My locks generally traipse beyond my shoulders. I have preferred it that way because I can easily tie them up. I’ve also felt very convinced that my personality is simply not cool enough for anything funkier. When I go to the salon, you can never really tell I’ve had my hair trimmed or styled. It looks the same, maybe a bit more accentuated on account of being blow-dried. After I gave birth to our first child, I felt overwhelmed by the extent of postpartum hair fall. It is normal to shed volumes because of the switch in hormones between pregnancy and the postpartum period. But it still feels astonishing to keep encountering strands of hair on the ground, oftentimes alongside the milk that seems to spill, involuntarily, from one’s breasts. I had my hair cut shorter then, but it was still just about shoulder length, and the stylist didn’t even layer it. It was a very simple cut.

In the aftermath of my recent ear surgery, though, I began rethinking my hairstyle, not out of vanity but from a pragmatic, practical perspective. You see, the doctor who operated on me told me she had inserted a tube inside my ear to allow for air to go through. This was something they needed to do because of the extent of the bacterial meningitis. I would need to keep this inside my ear for at least a year (until November 2025) and this meant I had to be extremely vigilant about not allowing any water to enter my right ear. When I returned from hospital, I washed my hair in the sink. It was uncomfortable and I found myself washing it less and less until I was down to less than once a week. I also had vivid memories of the nurses struggling to comb my hair because of its volume. It had gotten dry and tangled. They had also shaved the region right next to my right ear and the hair around this patch began to sprout. I started to feel extremely unkempt. But the thought of bathing my hair filled me with deep anxiety. What if a drop of water accidentally got through? What if I woke up once again in hospital with zero memory of how I got there?