My Grandmothers’ Braids
Simple hair rituals are an important expression of self-care for the women in my family
My paternal grandmother had a head full of thick, almost all-black hair, so much hair that she could barely ever leave it loose. Her hairline extended to her temples and to the nape of her neck, and her hair grew to her waist. Whenever I try remembering her now, almost seven years after her passing, I remember her big unruly bun weighing down her head a little. I had almost forgotten how, a few years before she moved cities for the final time, from a small northeastern Indian town to a big bustling eastern city, my mother and aunt spread newspapers all over the floor of my grandparents’ living room. My grandmother sat on a stool while my aunt and my mother cut her hair down to her shoulders. Clumps of hair fell on the newspapers, eclipsing all the old headlines. They used four pairs of scissors and when even that wouldn’t suffice, the women used a razor. My mother still talks about the unnatural amount of hair my grandmother had.
Both my grandmothers came into what is now India when governments decided to draw and redraw borders. They were women who raised homes, children, and families in a country, then packed it all up in boxes before setting foot on the new land they were expected to call home. The unpacking took years: the boxes…
