“One of the great joys in life is having one's hair brushed”

Says Vanessa Redgrave’s character Claire in the movie ‘Letters to Juliet’. The movie is not a blockbuster hit but I needed the romantic Italian fix for the lousy ruthlessly wasted Sunday. I had most certainly lost my love – so I tried, hopelessly, to fix that with some indoors work and the movie which just happened to be playing on Star movies for a romantic sap like me.

This dialogue struck me a lot. I mean come to think of it, our lives are filled with such pampering moments. Especially women – yeah I don’t expect men to have the same serene moment and reminisce about it. Our childhood is filled with mums tugging at our little ponytails and pigtails. Either we screamed, we cried, or we just sat there and annoyed mum or the maid or grandma by being all fidgety and shaky. The conversations we had, the lectures we have heard during those few precious moments. I find it therapeutic and bonding. And I most certainly never forgot how I ruined my perfect ponytails by sticking my finger right in the centre cuz it felt so soft and silky.

I recall mum waking up early if only just to tie my hair. I would not, under any circumstances, allow anyone to touch my hair. I believed it for real that my long lustrous thick mane was so only because my mum’s lucky hands groomed them into place. I felt her love, I felt her pain, her anger, exhaustion or plain bland emotion when she combed my hair. I felt what used to start as anger when she scolded me and then slowly turn into soft caressing of my hair as if to say ‘I love you no matter what’.

Then followed a few years of the boarding school touch. Up till the 6^th grade it was always the Tais who made sure we were all clean, clear and proper, that we washed our hair and oiled it. It did have affection but one that would make me and my fellow boarders value what we left back home. Many of us would take turns to complain. That would be made up by my girl-friends. We would steal time in the night at ‘lights out’ and oil each other’s hair and comb it to perfection. The styles we tried and what not. Whatever it was it helped us console each other when we were homesick, made us feel pretty in the growing years and even dissolves any frights and fights that we had.

Now it’s a luxury for real. I have to literally beg someone at home to give me a head massage so that I can relax and maybe just roll off to sleep after it. I miss it. Every once in a while I make a face (one that of a desperate child) and head to mum and cite a long exhaustive day and she amuses me. It’s perfect just like it always was…

Now I find myself, head leaning like the tower of Pisa, peering at Chris Egan to ‘for-gods-sake’ kiss Amanda Seyfried already… J :*