"I am too sexy for my hair", says Swami Avalokitananda
"The shoulder-length mane was the sine qua non of the counter-culture. It meant you were cool, you knew more than the birds and the bees, smoked grass and wore frayed jeans.
If you belonged to the saffron-brigade (not the BJP-Hindutva-type), long hair meant you still smoked grass, sat on a convenient hilltop, gazed at the sunset and smoked more grass while contemplating the Self. But, hair keeps changing all the time. On a frequent visit to civilisation, I was amazed to see a lot of youngsters sporting dreadful mops which made them look as though they had glued worn-out bits of door mats to the top of their heads.
Hair and hair-styles keep changing because hair is political. And the best song about the politics of hair is the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song: Almost Cut My Hair . "Happened just the other day. It was getting kind of long, Could have said it was in my way. But I didn’t and I wonder why..."
In my case, I stopped wondering why.
* * *
After a long drawn-out affair in trying to join and stay with the nine-to-five crowd, I opted out and made for the hills, the holy hill of Arunachala in Tiruvanamalai.
Two years later, my hair had grown right down to my knees. Not quite but it had that look. Long hair when everyone else is wearing it short gives one a kind of image.
In my case it was Mr Rock ‘n’ Roll. Sitting on a rock, listening to Dire Straits and Deep Purple led the local yokels to the realisation that this was The Man.
I was not going to shear my locks just to be a part of the clique. The fact I am hitting my 50s makes no difference at all. So what if there are hints of grey now. I mean, look at the Stones, Def Leppard long hair and well into their late 40s. These guys look cool.
On the other hand, look at what happened to Eric Clapton when he cut his locks and started wearing suits. He looks like an accountant. One tends not to take him seriously.
Even Mike Bolton, Daemon Jarvis and Noel Gallagher with their cropped heads look like botched-up, lobotomised cases. Imagine a crew-cut Noel belting out, "Driving that train, high on cocaine.’’ The man’s mad, you’d say to yourself and turn back to the book. My long hair is going to stay. It took me two years to get it to grow that long. Besides I was born cool, lived cool, so why not die cool with my long hair wrapped around my body when they get it all ready for the ashtray."
Photograph: Colston Julien Model: Apache Indian Clothes courtesy Priyadarshini Rao for Melange