Musings
The Great Hair Question
Sheikh Hasina
It's that particular time in our lives when we should be speaking of hair. We wouldn't have, had the prime minister and the leader of the opposition not got into a spat about it. You know about that, don't you? If you've forgotten, here's giving your memory a little jog: the prime minister has said she will not move a hair's breadth where her position on the caretaker idea is concerned. In angry response, the opposition leader has waxed eloquent, almost poet-like, in her declaiming that a wind will rise and blow all the hair off the prime ministerial head.
So what do we have here? Simple. Politics has now arrived at a very hairy, or call it hirsute, stage. You see, the hair issue is not something we can easily ignore. Either hair is there or it's not. If it is there, there are all the manifestations of it. If it is not, there is likely to be much comment. Now think of Pakistan's Nawaz Sharif. Only a few years ago, he came across as nearly bald. That was fine with us. But watch him now. There is a pretty remarkable crop of hair on that wonderful pate. What happened? Well, the answer comes in whispers: Sharif has had a grafting of artificial hair, which is how he looks different, even younger than before.
Which of course takes us back, yet once again, to this matter of people on whom hair is conspicuous by its absence. Men without hair or with receding hair look older than their friends and even their avuncular relatives. Didn't TS Eliot speak of the plight of hair-deprived men in his poetry? Women do not take a second look at bald men. If they do, it is to observe the gleam on that bullet-like thing we respectfully think of as the head. And then they laugh in low tones. Have you noticed that women with bald husbands are usually a depressed lot, or perhaps they are embarrassed? People are never keen on thoughts of seeing their beautiful daughters tie the knot with men who have little or no hair.
Begum Khaleda Zia
But let's return to the prime minister and the opposition leader. The hair on Hasina's head gives you a sense of feminine tradition as it has come down through the ages in Bangladesh. It's hair our mothers' generation was always proud of. That kind of hair accorded immense grace to Begum Khaleda Zia in her younger days. Go back to the photographs where she shares space with her husband. And now? Something has happened to that hair. It has been replaced by something that does not quite relate to poetry. But that's no cause to pillory her. Think of how Hillary Clinton looks at changes in women's hair: 'I am one of those people who think that changing one's hair is the only part of the body that you can change at will.' And there you have it.
Have you realised that a very large number of people in this country are unwilling to have their age show through their hair turning salt-and-pepper or plain white? You see all these people around you, in their fifties and sixties and even seventies, absolutely opposed to getting old. And what do they do? They dye the hair black or golden or blonde. It happens to women as well as men. We have politicians who don't have white or grey hair. But that is not so cleverly concealed under a thick dye. It would have been all right had it not been for the sagging cheeks and those deepening lines around the neck. No matter what you do to your hair to imagine that you are yet young, you can really do nothing about those aging cheeks and necks.
Watch all those faces, those of newscasters and comperes. They are all young, for we are yet to reach a stage where we can tell ourselves that grey matters — and matters a huge deal. In the West, people have developed the beautiful tradition of middle-aged men and women, white or grey streaks in their hair, reading the news or taking a guest through an enlightening conversation. In our part of the world, that would be a shock. Dark hair is all. One with grey hair is a dinosaur. Or as good as dead.
But hair on a woman's head, especially in the subcontinent, has also been an invitation to trouble. Our male chauvinistic society has not quite come round to acknowledging the theme of gender equality, which is why we still come across reports of men seizing their women by the hair and inflicting all sorts of indignities on them. In the villages, when the ojha or self-styled exorcist tries to drive the 'devil' out of an 'insane woman', invariably the first thing he does is to have the poor woman's long tresses snipped off by a pair of scissors. You would think the devil had been lurking in that hair. With the hair now gone, the devil too has escaped those who would subject him to torment. What fools these mortals be! And haven't they heard of Samson and Delilah?
Rapunzel had luxuriant hair. In the Kamasutra, man's passion for woman is heightened by the sight of the flowing hair on a woman. On the cartoon show, a haughty Miss Piggy often turns angrily away from Kermit, not realizing that her hair in its frenzied movement had hit him squarely in the face.
Ah, well! Let's not worry too much about this hair thing. Remember what Shakespeare said once? 'There's many a man has more hair than wit.' He said nothing about hair on women. Or did he?
The writer is Executive Editor, The Daily Star.
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