We need more hairbonds

There is no such thing as boredom

When you are stuck in a traffic jam, when you are waiting for someone, when you are stranded on a shop verandah during a downpour with a contemplative cow who is in no mood for conversation, when the power goes off and the dog has just eaten the only matchbox, when you have nothing to do, you could Make Theories instead of pulling out that mobile phone. There is no such thing as boredom, believe me.

For example, this one happened in one of those gaps:


Part 1: Anti-lice shampoo killed more than lice

In the beginning….okay, in the very olden days - the Neanderthals were supposed to have spent a lot of time picking lice off each other. They were very hairy people, so these must have been solid long sessions. Apart from de-lice-ification, this also served the very important purpose of social bonding especially at a time when language was yet to develop. Physical proximity with people whose affection you are sure of, was, and continues to be, the most important calmant, comforter, and de-stresser known to man.

Before anti-lice shampoo was invented, women, up to the modern times, spent a lot of time on these group de-licing sessions, picking out lice from family, neighbours, and children. And people had thick long hair, lots of place for lice to breed. These sessions were also major talk-and-bonding sessions - women complained to each other about their husbands, mothers-in-law, children, ailments, and got free advice, consolation, psychotherapy in the bargain. Plus the amazing comfort of someone’s fingers in their hair. Altogether Therapeutic.

(Men also had long hair in the very ancient past, I presume some of these sessions happened in families too, but maybe with only one woman around to do the de-licing.)

With the invention of anti-lice shampoo, this ritual stopped. (Additionally, no modern woman would ever admit to another that she has lice on her head!) And with it was lost these moments of bonding and de-stressing and relaxation. We are much poorer for the same, I believe.

Part 2: We need more hairbonds

The same holds good for oiling, combing, and braiding hair. Bonding Big Time. Hair-time is conversation-time. And since when you are oiling, braiding hair, the oilee/braidee does not have to face the oiler/braider, conversation on difficult-to-talk-about things is also easier. The warm massaging of loving hands on your head/shoulders/back also relaxes you no end. Enough oxytocin would be created in your body to last you a few days. (Oxytocin, the feel-good, immunity-building hormone that is produced in your body during physical closeness, the cuddling hormone as they call it).

With the cutting of hair in both sexes, with the belief in oil massages coming down, with less time, with even perhaps a lessening of such willingness-to-do-something-just-to-make-someone-feel-good, in a more self-centred world, this is another bonding ritual we are losing sadly. A paid massage at the spa/parlour, I do not think, produces the same amount of oxytocin as the hands and presence of someone who loves you.

If people revived these hair-rituals (okay, maybe not really cultivate lice for the purpose, but the oiling, combing, braiding part?), I believe we would all have more immunity, and less stress, and therefore the world would be a happier place. We need this all the more today than ever perhaps. (And Kerala would be the next Super Power exporting coconut oil faster than they can produce it hee hee. So we'll have oil-sheiks in lungis instead of in djellabas, oh boy.)

And perhaps that is why Buddhist monks shave their heads as the first step to entering monkhood? A voluntary renunciation of human comfort, a loosening of bonds, a decisive acceptance of contemplative, meditative solitude?

End of Hair theory. 2005