Snip .. snip... (blogmarathon post no. 21)

It’s been a while that my elder daughter has been after me and my husband to give her the permission to chop off her waist length hair.  She started growing her hair when she was around 9 or so, now she is 14. Like every teenager and as per fashion trend she had started this demand almost  2 years back itself, may be the fact that she had become a teenager had everything to do with it, other wise she was quite happy with the hair.  

  Now this Sunday, we finally surrendered to her wish as she was not taking care of her hair at all and was almost indifferent to its existence as such ! so we thought that its better to give into her desire rather than try to control her.  So off I went with her to the beauty salon and the girl there chopped it off snip..snip … snip and I almost felt as if one of my body part was being chopped off, at the same time my daughter was over the moon, I could not see even a flicker of sadness on her face or an attachment to the hair which she had initially grown with so much care and proud. 

Well.. both her grandmothers, my aunts were all upset at the sight of short hair on her (thanks to whatsapp for enabling to send such news to the entire family tree in a click). But my cousins were all rejoicing as they thought that such long hair aged her and it was not in fashion any more to have long hair.

Well I remember I had the same desperation till the time I got married because my parents were very clear that I can do whatever I want with my long hair ( I also had long hair) after marriage, and after a year of marriage I had gone off to parlour in a huff, after a tiff with the husband to be precise (!!!)  and chopped off my long tresses (though later I was aghast at what I did).  Well after that my hair has actually not grown beyond the shoulder level and it has sort of taken revenge on me by protesting and deciding not to grow no matter what ever I did to pamper it  and grow it long like before !!

So I could to a certain extend understand why my daughter was so happy at cutting her hair short but at the same time being a mother I was proud of her hair and how people admired her long hair.. the long chopped tresses in the hair dressers hand actually gave me a sense of loss.... 

I was just thinking to myself that for all of us,  though we are all supposed to be quite modern and living in a cosmopolitan city and all,  we still somewhere cling on to our roots and tradition and when one of our loved one does something which is not as per our tradition it still pinches us.  But then what this modern and cosmopolitan set up has done to us is that -  we  are quicker to adjust and forget all about it and ultimately learn to bear with it, all with  a pinch of salt, isn't it??