Maryam Ahmad writes about how the act of oiling one’s hair opens an intimate space for sharing and bonding for women.

Every Sunday at 2:00 pm, Ammi and I sit under the blistering sun, her on daadi’s charpai, while I find space between her legs on the floor. Now add two different bottles of hair oil to the mix. Ammi pours some on her left palm, rubs it between her hands and starts to massage my scalp. We sit silently for the first few minutes and then she reminds me of her distant cousin’s daughter, who is getting married next weekend.

Pasand ki shaadi hay [it’s a love marriage], she says.

She goes on about how she’s getting old and that according to the teachings of Islam; it’s her duty to marry off her girls. 

I exasperate a half-hearted  “fine” and that I’ll think about it in a few years (she knows that I won’t), hoping it would end the conversation but it’s only the beginning of a conversation of another kind. An innocent love affair, a secret long kept until now. 

“Listen we’re very open-minded, your father and I. If you like someone, just tell us.” 

She stops to tilt my head to the other side, “We’ve all done this…liked somebody. I did too, back in college”. Never in my life had I thought I’d listen to my mother talk about a man who wasn’t my father. 

I rotate my head at a 270 degree angle to cross-check if the woman oiling my hair is my biological mother; she rotates my skull back to confirm that it is, indeed, her. 

“Blue eyes, tall, a little muscular, funny also… he was almost always at our house”. 

“What happened?” I ask impatiently. “Your nana found out and got me married off as soon as possible” she chuckles.

So many questions, concerns and thoughts compete for attention inside my mind, I try to form a coherent sentence but end up comfortably blurting out, “Did you try? Did you even fight for it?” almost forgetting that I’m asking for details about my own mother’s love life that does not include my father. 

“Of course, he and I both did. He was a friend of your mamu’s. Poor lad, he even sent a rishta and everything.” 

“Wait, I don’t understand. What was the problem?” 

At this point, I wonder if she’s reevaluating whether or not she’s told me more than she should have but she grins, “They say it was because he was Punjabi but deep down, we all knew it was because he had dared to ask for my hand in marriage. You see, he had challenged the status quo, my brother’s friend, a frequent visitor –  almost a  family member to say the least.” 

She starts to twist my slick oily hair into a braid, “We did try, you know. Even after the whole fiasco, we’d write letters to each other  without the guarantee of receiving an answer given our households…maybe it wasn’t meant to be”. 

She pats my back and gets up, signaling the end of both our  oiling session and our discussion.      

Still sitting on the ground, I realize I have never seen my mother like this. So naive yet confident, almost proud to have committed to something as brave as loving someone she didn’t end up with. 

It’s no coincidence that the ancient Sanskrit word, “sneha” or “to oil” also translates to “to love” and I reflect upon how one can only truly love in safe spaces. 

So what was it about the mere acting oiling that made my mother open up to me, unprovoked? Was it because of the physical closeness of the act itself or was it because South Asian women lack access to spaces where they can open their hearts and truly be themselves? Or is it simply the absence of men in such situations and places that allows for other worlds to blossom? 

Last year, during my sister’s COVID wedding, our relatives started coming over unannounced every night just to sing, dance and occasionally comment on how well or badly the wedding festivities were going. In brown households, while preparations start early on, so do dholkis and ratjagas, to mark the start of wedding festivities. Two days before the wedding, Ammi had invited all the women of the family for a mehndi [henna] night, which was supposed to be spent applying mehndi on the palms and feet of all the women folk of the household. 

But after dinner, something magical happened. The  women from my mother’s generation sat down with henna cones in their hands and bellies full of food…..and stories.   

When it was my turn to get my mehndi done, I sat crossed-legged,  opposite to phuppo (paternal aunt) as she shows me the designs on her phone. 

“I’m making this for you,”, she says pointing at one, “Your hands are too small anyway.” She laughs and I laugh with her.  “You know, I’ve been dreaming about her so much lately.” 

I’m confused, is she talking to me, or my mother who’s sat beside me. She looks up to at my mother, their eyes meet for a second and she goes back to the pattern on my hand. “I still remember, the night I went to the hospital, the new doctor kept saying it’s nothing. It’s a routine checkup.” 

This woman, my aunt, has practically brought me up. She knows things about me my own mother doesn’t and yet, I can’t seem to put a finger on what she’s talking about. Whatever it is, it’s making her visibly sad.

“Miscarrying really does scar you, especially in the 9th month. You’re basically going through the pain of childbirth, without taking the child home at the end of it.” 

My eyes widen as I look at her face, she’s smiling but a tear trickles down her left cheek. 

“You know I was practically forced to look at her, I didn’t want to…” 

At 24, this is the first time I’ve heard someone say the word “miscarriage” out loud, let alone speak about it. 

Ammi slides closer, “You know, I also wonder, had Dr. Zeenat been around maybe things would be different”. 

“Why? Where was Dr. Zeenat?” I ask Ammi rhapsodically, because I cannot, for the life of me look at my phuppo. 

“On her annual leave… When she came back, she called me up, said it was totally avoidable”, says phuppo “Here, all done. Tell me if you want any additions” she adds as she holds my palm out for me to inspect. The conversation soon jumped to something much more banal yet lively but the something quiet but beautiful had settled within me.      

Today, as I sit in my room alone, trying to copy a henna pattern by myself for my friend’s wedding, with my work laptop open in front of me to not miss out an important email; I can’t help but wonder how many such conversations didn’t take place simply because there were never enough comforting women around. 

The emotional wellbeing of South Asian women is often placed at the peripheries of their own homes, while being expected to labour from and within its very center. The women in my generation have lost some of these spaces in our  lives, to dwell, cherish and giggle at suggestive stories from our mothers and grandmothers and to simply exist as openly as men do. Perhaps our lives are far too fast-paced to go back to sitting together for hours, chatting away. But even then, losing traditions might not be as scary as living with the thought that you never truly know the people you love, not closely enough to be able to understand their afflictions and accept them at their wholest self.