This Summer, Go Indi-Afro

Have you heard of cornrows? Well, not those undulating fields of corn that make up half the arable land in Africa...or maybe that's where the inspiration for it comes from..But here, what I'm talking about is how they create cornrows on your scalp...

It isn't an easy task I tell you. When your hair is that springy and tightly wound as the hair of Africans, it takes some innovation to style it and give it a distinctive look...

My first brush with an Afro hair style was when I was all of 3. My dad, like any good Malayali has spent most of his professional life working abroad and though a chunk of it of his was spent in the Gulf - Saudi Arabia to be precise, the first quarter of his professional life roughly was spent in Africa - first in Cameroun and then in Tanzania.

So coming back to my Afro style, when I was 3, my parents, new at parenthood decided to enter me into a fancy dress competition and dressed me up like a little local. With my straight cap of jet black hair, portioned into various sections and tightly wound up to look like a nice African hairstyle. Now what they didn't bargain for was vanity in a 3 year old. The precocious child that I was, all my interest in participation vanished when I realised that I had been given a hairstyle which in my little eyes wasn't glamourous enough...What would you expect when all around me there were little princesses with long flowing hair till their tiny backs...and for someone given the 'boy-cut' to keep her thick dark mop manageable, this seemed like there was little value addition...So I cried and threw fits and tantrums till they had to undo all their hardwork and only then did I take a sulky bow in the Indian gathering where the fancy dress was held...I guess I didn't feel fancy enough...( Dad has promised to scan that photo soon..when that comes in you shall see my first Afro too)

And then about a couple of decades later, here I am, in Brighton, suddenly fancying myself with an Afro-cornrow. I had been gung-ho about giving it a shot for a while, but the tipping point came when my gorgeous flatmate came back from a trip to London with this gorgeous hairstyle - a braided black carpet of hair...

I pestered her day and night, used all my charm up to coax her into trying that on my hair....Delicate issue of elastics to keep my silky dead-straight hair in some form of shape was the first stumbling block. But L my flatmate had all the solutions, now that she was sold on the idea.

So there on the first really sunny bright day, we sat in the little patio outside our house, L with her tube of 'Virgin Non-Sticky Hair Fertilizer' ( can you imagine how much we laughed over that?) and elastics and a comb - and the really enthu-cutlet in me...

All was well, when she portioned out my hair and told me that she would be just doing the crown part for doing the entire thick mess that was my hair would take atleast half a day. I said a breezy 'yes'. And L got down to work...In two minutes, the air was pierced by my Owwwwwwwwww....Did you know that an Afro-cornrow style makes you see little stars and bells and bees in front of your eyes? Little pinpricks of pain across my scalp as L began efficiently creating braids out of tiny portions....

By the half-way mark, we had to take a break for me to gather more breaths into my system to chant more Owwwwws in rhythmic beats to L's nimble finger sorcery....For a brief while I thought of doing a radical hairstyle, keep the half already done cornrow intact and leaving the other wound like a red-Indian woman over my other ear...Something like this....

But L would have none of it...She doesn't begin jobs to not finish it, you see...So then I studied more of those tiny birds flitting around with tiny little glowbees while little bells chimed....and L would encourage me to hold on saying "sorry love, just a little more...just a little while longer"....So with the determination of a pioneer all kicked to breach a new frontier I persevered.

And through all this, my friends were having a rocking time, taking pictures of the entire ordeal. This picture remains my friend A's favourite one...

An hour of torture...and L was a proud Braid Mama....My crown was down...and the remaining she said will fit into a ponytail...

So there I was with my Indi-afro cornrow...all set for Summer...

Now this isn't a hairstyle for the fainthearted. Your scalp will hurt like a bitch for a while reminding you about how your hair wasn't meant for such torture. But the end result was 'Oh-so worth it' for me.

Another thing to remember this Brighton Summer by....The Summer that I went Indi-Afro...and proudly so...

Life does come a full circle doesn't it...My folks saw me on Skype and the first thing they said was remember when you bawled your lungs out when we tried this on you? And now see, you think it is fashionable...Ahhhh, the fickle mind, I tell you!!!