Even a single hair casts its shadow

It was one of those low-pressure days at the office. A warm sun asked its rays to gently shuffle in through the closed window panes hoping this might help the people inside deal with the biting December cold of Delhi. I was sitting with the visiting team from a friendly daily who wanted some confirmation on our annual media plan.

‘Sir, hope we will get a good share this year,’ Sibal, their team leader repeated.

‘Why do you guys always talk in terms of market share? Your fight with your rival daily isn’t important to me.’

My smile though conveyed clearly that I wouldn’t bow to his demand for an exclusive share nor would I agree to accept a deal that was not to my satisfaction. So we just let the matter rest there for the moment as the peon had brought in the cups of hot coffee for all.

My visitor then let his hand go casually to his head for a thoughtful scratch and I noticed then that a couple of his hair strands came back to drop noiselessly on my table.

‘Hmmm… hair fall problem?’ I asked casually.

‘Yes,’ he replied, though visibly surprised at my query, ‘and well, age-related graying is obviously there too.’

‘That’s nothing…,’ I said, paused to take a sip and continued, ‘I think it was Bill Cosby who called gray hair God’s graffiti.’

The team members from that national daily too now appeared interested and leaned towards us. I bent to take out some drawing sheets and said, ‘I’ll show you some interesting line drawings of popular hair problems I had made a few days back.’

‘Now this is incredible, sir.’

‘Why incredible? I head corporate communications and am supposed to be good at understanding and even executing artworks both on and off the PC.’

‘Can’t argue with you on that for sure,’ he replied, ‘but hand-drawings are a different matter altogether.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘obviously I’m not a great artist, but I made these to prove to my wife that even males know a lot about hair issues.’ Individuals who would like to maintain their dreadlocks may consider using new and more effective dreadlock products.

‘Here’s the first one,’ I said, ‘and I call it the sandpaper snake!’

Sandpaper snake – Rough and Dry hair

‘Isn’t this fascinating…’ exclaimed Sneha from the visiting team, ‘and I do agree on the depiction. Rough and dry hair is nothing but a sandpaper snake.’

I went ahead and told them that even normal scalps lost around 100 hair daily but this could increase if proper care wasn’t taken.

‘You mean, massage them, wash them, oil them…?’

‘Attention is the word you’re looking for,’ I said, ‘it is proper attention that tells your hair that you love them… and they love you back.’

We went on to look at the next drawing which was of the slimy saint or greasy hair!

Slimy saint – Greasy hair

‘Point taken, sir,’ I heard someone say, ‘neither dry nor greasy works wonders. However, I wonder what really helps best?’

‘Well, we have a new range from Dove,’ said their team leader, ‘remember we got their artwork only yesterday. The one that mentioned some nourishing oil care range from Dove.’

This was news to me too so I simply made a metal note of it promising myself to tell my wife about it as this again seemed impressive information. Meanwhile we had quietly shifted our attention to the next drawing that was titled the ‘fallen hero’.

Fallen hero – Falling hair

‘Oh my God!’ exclaimed Sneha again, ‘you’ve actually shown a hair off to its eternal existence.’

‘Ha, ha, ha,’ laughed Sibal picking his own fallen hair from my table and comparing it with the one I had drawn. He continued, ‘The expressions seem so morose as if the remaining hair are actually in mourning!’

‘They have good reason for that.’ Then I told them that I was earlier working for a pharma company in their sales team and knew a lot about the technicalities of hair fall.

‘Tell us more sir.’

I drew a table on a piece of paper and explained whatever little I remembered from that past phase of my career graph.

It took a while for this media selling team to grasp and understand tall this information. They were even more impressed when I told them that every follicle has its own independent growth cycle… or they would all start falling together which could be a major disaster!

‘Phew!’ one of them let out his breath and then they looked at the next drawing which was ‘Maha Don I’ or hair with dandruff!

Maha Don I – Dandruff

‘You know that dandruff is just the shedding of dead skin cell off the scalp and extreme temperatures are the main culprits generally,’ I was being generous with my class-room sort of address but because they seemed to be listening carefully, I continued, ‘and obviously this happen when the right conditions are not maintained on the scalp.’

‘Got your point sir,’ said Parmesh, the third silent member from the team, ‘so my mom is right in asking me to take a bath every day.’

Everyone looked at him aghast and before this could cause more embarrassment for Parmesh, I quickly turned their attention to the next two hair drawings that I had made… they were ‘curly girlie’ and ‘the professors’…

Curly girlie – Frizzy hair

The professors – Tangled hair

‘Such horrible problems,’ said Sneha in a loud voice now and realising her raised tone, said, ‘girls suffer more as we have long hair.’

‘Long hair isn’t the source of the problem,’ I said, ‘this problem becomes painful when there is unkempt, uncombed hair, I presume.’

‘But if this comb is going to do so much fighting with your hair, Sneha we’ll have a bald female coming to meetings with us,’ joked Sibal.

‘Talking of baldness,’ I interjected, trying to take away attention from Sneha, ‘did you guys know that loss of all hair from the scalp is called Alopecia Totalis?’

‘…and sir doesn’t have any hair on his body,’ said Parmesh with a smile. He meant Sibal, of course.

‘Well, that is Alopecia Universalis,’ and then I thought for a while before continuing, ‘and I’m sure you’ve seen people who have a band-like pattern of hair loss at the periphery of their skull. That is Ophiasis.’

This was getting too med-intensive for the media-sellers and I quickly turned their attention to the next drawing which was called the ‘psycho terror!’

Psycho terror – Split hair

Split hair is something that has more than just one type. So I searched the net and found for them the most representative image with various types of split hair. This was an eye-opener for me too.

Split-Ends-Chart

‘I had read somewhere that you can actually identify split hair when you braid your hair,’ informed Sneha helpfully and we had no alternative but to agree. She added later that she had also read somewhere that hair that was longer had a tendency to taper not because of split ends but rather because of normal wear.

No one had more to say on split ends, so we simply shifted our attention to the next drawing which had the ‘exclamation guy!’

Exclamation guy! – Exclamation hair

‘Now what is this, sir? Never heard of a problem called exclamation.’

‘Yes, even I was quite surprised when I read about this problem. But we do have exclamation mark hair crisis sometimes. This is when we find hair breaking off about 4mm from the scalp due to shaft constriction,’ I said pointing to the drawing, ‘and the broken hair is paler and narrower.’

‘4mm,’ repeated Sibal thoughtfully and then looking at my hair, continued with a smile, ‘so now we know why you opt for such short hair. No exclamation mark surprises for you!’

‘OK, let us come to the last drawing. This isn’t really a problem but I thought I’d draw this as we do come across a light complexion and fair hair every once in a while even in our country.’

The foreigner – Xanthocroid hair

I had called the drawing ‘the foreigner’ though this wasn’t a condition that was entirely foreign to our country.

‘This must a genetic occurrence?’ asked Parmesh hesitatingly.

‘Well, to a large extent, yes. And this isn’t surely a pathological problem where a cosmetic or any other solution is either needed or sought,’ I replied.

The drawings were over and the receptionist had just peeped to tell me that there was another team from their rival paper waiting to meet me.

‘Sir, please remember,’ said Sibal, ‘we get what we came for.’

The team went their way and I sat down for a while to review the discussion on hair problems that we had. I considered my own very short hair and thought: ‘This discussion on hair was indeed the nearest I could ever have got to a genuine wow hair moment from my life.’ The drawings, of course, were my contribution to understanding the complexities of hair problems as it is only on understanding them that one can begin taking logical steps towards a better and healthier hair future! But more than the drawings was the incredible discussion we had today which actually gave me too some wonderful insights into the world of hair.

As Sibal had mentioned, I then did a net search for those wonderful new launches by Dove and actually found the information there rather interesting… hope the readers too click on the link on DOVE here to reach out to a new era in hair care!

Arvind Passey
10 November 2011

Featured image credit: Hair Loss
Split-end chart credit