My experiments with hair color....

Sometime in 2002, I was fascinated with changing my hair color. I went to the nearby walgreens and picked up a brown shade from Revlon. Picking the color was not an easy task; anyway I tried it and lo....nothing happened. It did not even look like I had applied a hair color; remained as black as ever, except if I stood under some halogen lamp :-( But I did not give up so easily. Tried again after a couple of months and was a little more successful; turns out these colors take a while to show up.

Then I went home in Dec that year; hair color craze had just started in India. My mom is totally against coloring my hair ( I've heard long lectures about how it would spoil my hair etc). So it was a quite a challenge to do it under her nose and get away with it. I changed from brown to a reddish-brown. While that sounds nice; it was quite different. It looked like I had put henna on my hair. So thats exactly what I told my mom (plus the fact that henna is good for the hair). I don't know if she bought the story; I was back here before she could think about it. The color improved (thankfully) and I had a nice reddish-brown shade for a while. Ofcourse, nothing good lasts forever. I had a short boy-cut hairstyle and so as the length grew; the color change became more obvious. I tried a few more bolder red shades after that; one could say that I always had some strange hair color hehehhee. This was a constant source of amusement for all my friends.

I had a weird bright red shade this May. I still remember the first time I looked at myself after I tried this color; I was alone at home, I toweled my hair and looked in the mirror and almost fainted with shock. Whose reflection was it ? I hoped that the mirror had some dispersion problem(or watever). I promptly saw my reflection in another mirror under a different light, I looked worse. Eeekss....It looked like I had a red wig on. I panicked and finally went to meet a friend. My friend was ROFL after looking at me. I was almost in tears. Then I calmed down and decided to carry it off. :-) Unfortunately this was the time I was visiting Archana in California. I avoided standing under bright lights and took pictures carefully. Ofcourse I was always with a cap ( it was very hot hehehe). Everyone I met would ask me about the shade; I know deep inside they were collecting info so that they never buy that shade ( It was a L'oreal F'eria Red Highlight). The color seemed to grow on me and faded quickly. After a few months I changed to a light brown shade.

I also sported a color contact lens (amethyst) last year; which meant my origin was not so easy to guess. I have been mistaken to be a hispanic many times. I have fun changing my appearance and confusing everyone; especially when desis are around and they would speak in Tamil/Kannada/Hindi assuming that I would surely not know what they were speaking. :-)

Using my upcoming wedding as an excuse, my mom asked me to start growing my hair and stop coloring. Apparently South Indian brides don't sport red hair. Sigh ! So, my hair length is quite long now compared to how it was. Most of my friends would not recognize me now ! Funny how much difference hair length and color can make !

Now its back to square one; went to a salon on friday and colored my hair back to black. I feel weird when I look at myself in the mirror. Well, lets see how long this lasts..........