When Nirvana is Just a Bottle Away

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There was a time when we lived happily ever after with frizz, dandruff and split ends. A weekly dose of egg shampoo with a lot of bathroom singing and we were good for a week. The first three days were bouncy bliss while the remaining were a mousy mess, but we were okay with it.

One fine day someone somewhere decided that for their company to sell more shampoos they need to make their prospective consumers feel bad about their hair. It started with the hunt for models with luscious hair. They were made to wear turtle neck sweaters in black, before their head and shoulder were doused with chalk powder. The gorgeous girl with shiny mane was then instructed to turn around, notice the Milky Way galaxy on her shoulders and gasp with horror. Her boyfriend, her legion of admirers, colleagues mirrored her disgust and refused to talk to her till she started using Cynical antidandruff shampoo.

The dawn of realization hit millions of men and women worldwide. The white dusty thing, the giver of itchy scalps was evil and it was time to exterminate it. We set about it with a vengeance and shed much hair at the altar of dandruff-free existence. Rather have less hair than more dandruff and wear a black turtle neck with my head held up high.

Shampoo companies were getting ambitious. After all they had tasted blood. So they started packaging themselves as the nectar of joy. The banisher of frizz, split-ends, falling hair and the provider of happiness self-esteem and blow-dried shiny hair, enriched with vitamins.

Pretty girls endowed with abundant hair on their scalps were now being snapped up by advertising firms only to have their hair tousled, distressed, dried for the “before look”. Freed from the tyranny of turtle necks, she was allowed to wear vests, hold her tresses like it was a piece of dirty rag she had picked up from the floor, roll her eyes in disgust and then run into the nearest shower stall to work up a mountain of lather on her scalp. She would then go running to the fields, swaying her miraculously cured, smoothened and shiny hair. The look that took 2 hours and a battery of “hair-experts” to achieve! Too bad most of us were led to believe that it could be ours for a few hundred rupees.

Suddenly we were feeling ashamed of what we were born with – straight hair wanted curls, curls wanted to be rebonded, black wanted to go copper, short wanted extensions! We discovered keratin, PH balance, Pro Vitamin B5, verbena, lavender. One look at the all new “Sea of Spa Black mud shampoo Enriched with Obliphica Oil” on the pharmacist shelf and our mop of hair would start doing the Samba. We were all convinced that the exoticness of the ingredients stuffed in our shampoo was directly proportional to bliss.

Our hair follicles now had the choice to soak their roots in hibiscus enriched oils, wash it off with a residue free shampoo and use a devilishly deep conditioner to keep it glossy.

A legion of women were now more keen to enrich their tresses rather than their lives! And why not, joy was now packaged in pretty looking jars and bottles.

Not just shampoo; we have an array of delectable options to tighten, brighten, smoothen and plump our skins ravaged by stress and aging.

It’s so funny that there are people who actually believe in the dictum of eating well, sleeping right and thinking positive to look and feel beautiful. In this age of instant gratification who has time for the slow and tedious process of healing?