Oh the joys of Indian hair. People think it’s a bountiful waterfall of light-reflecting endless beauty, as thick and straight as it is never-ending. Whilst that’s often the case, some of us got the raw end of the deal and have weedy frizz-prone locks that fail to even skim our shoulders, other have so much wild curly hair that they can barely contain its ferocity. Whatever the case, there are a few home truths that all girls with Indian hair can definitely attest to...

1. You know the pain of having your head smothered and forcefully massaged in jasmine or coconut oil as a child. Your mother swears it will make your hair grow faster, and as she is the oracle of all knowledge, you listen. 

2. In reality, she lied. You now look like an orphaned grease-ball that nobody loves enough to wash.

3. You learn, quickly, that black hair plus bleach = orange. That’s not sexy Joan Holloway orange, it’s putrid tangerine-brown. And, you’ve got to live with the horror. 

4. You (could) have been born with hair like Aishwarya Rai – the Beyoncé of Bollywood.

5. Or, it could look like this:

6. Accordingly and like with Afro hair, rain – even the slightest drizzle - is your nemesis. 

7. So you should never, ever, move here.

8. When you were a small child - roughly two - your parents forcibly shaved your head as part of some (borderline satanic) cultural ritual meant to help your hair grow thicker. 

9. If that’s not bad enough, they regale your friends with stories and pictures about how this humiliating life event meant that for the following two years you were frequently mistake for A LITTLE BOY.

10. Cue therapy...

11. You try henna, out of sheer boredom. It’s what white people use as ‘fake tattoos’ and what Indian women put on their hair to hide the grey. 

12. Unfortunately, this means you now have funny, reddy-brown hair like your aging Aunty Gurpreet.

13. You go professional, but have one hair colour choice and one only. Brown highlights - that’s it. FOREVER. 

 14. Wearing any kind of hair jewellery veers dangerously close to Indian bride. Don’t give your mum false hope. 

15. Likewise, rocking a vintage-inspired turban makes you look very ‘ethnic’ – not a bad thing, but not quite the forties-siren look you were going for.

16. You have a distant relation whose hair is so long it reaches the ground. You have never met her - she could be an urban myth. 

 17. Your mum always told you that if you eat up all your okra, your hair will grow strong and long. You’ve been eating the slimy bast*rd things for three decades and your hair is still shoulder length. 

18. You try another route to Bollywood hair. To make it grow like Karina Kapoor’s locks (damn her enviable follicular prowess) you apply a putrid mixture of castor oil and crushed hibiscus petal because your ‘auntie’ said it (definitely) works. Your hair still looks wack.

19. Sure, your hair is shiny and dark - but it’s also like that on your arms too. 

20. You go on a family trip to India; you come back with 28 different varieties of herbal shampoo in a bid to go back to your Ayurvedic roots. Your dad reiterates that it’s the oldest recorded form of medicine. You try it; and will smell like a herb-bathed hippie for the foreseeable future.

21. The only Disney character you have any empathy with is Pocahontas because she has black hair. Give a sh*t about Cinderella.

22. You try on blonde wigs just to see what it would look like. 

23.If you attempt anything even vaguely quirky to your hair, it gives the older Indian generation free reign to just STARE AT YOU.

24.In extreme cases, they’ll actually come up to you and offer the following advice: “You’ll never get a husband with pink hair,” despite the fact they don’t actually know you. 

25. You accept and revel in the fact that when you have children, you too will shave their heads and smother them in coconut oil.

And thus the circle of Indian hair continues.