Have you ever got a Hair Spa?

“Have you ever got a hair spa?”

A year and a half back I was asked this same question and I had looked despairingly at the saloon owner thinking here she goes again, trying to push through another product/service that I don’t want and what is wrong with the world and spending on frivolities that we can definitely do without? I mean a ‘hair-spa’ sounded like another chochla of big people with bigger pockets and the biggest of vella time.

“Just get one,” she had said with eyes so full and assertive as though she was coaxing me to volunteer for a mission of world peace. Post that she began to enumerate how my hair was begging for moisture. “But I do wash them every second day with water,” I stressed, half wondering what these women wash theirs with. I was then explained to that my hair was dry and damaged and more blah-blah on some pollution crap. I wanted to tell her how my beloved still loved to hold them tenderly in his hands and not so tenderly when not so tender, but let the urge pass. Hitherto I had lived on the premise that pollution is only fatal for the lungs and breathing and glaciers. Apparently like most of my premises, this one too sucked and sucked my natural and otherwise eternal beauty.

She had already made some not-so-flattering remarks about my non-toned and sagging skin I can’t believe I just typed that and I am not even deleting it and bulging sides and age spots on my face-it was a fitness cum beauty centre and so what do you expect-the diversions from my face to the body were natural yes, I am trying now to salvage the damage done. I had finally begun to wonder-not about the so called flaws in my physicality but rather what the f@#$ was I still standing there and doing, listening to her rip me apart? My self esteem was wilting so low that we’d need cranes to lift it up again.

I told her point blank- ‘Lady, you are not helping your own cause if you are going to pick my faults even worse than my husband!’ And finally she got the jhatka, immediately realising that she had overdone it and then began a butter dipped little speech on how fair my skin is otherwise, and how fair-soft skin could LATER be prone to problems now she tells me and how my hair just needed a bit of pampering. She just saved herself from being crowned with the worst salesgirl tag and almost won the best one, for I gave in to a trial session. Okay hair spa me and this better be good!

I was led inside a chamber and little red lamps and candles were lit instead of the harsh glares of bulbs and tube-lights. Light instrumental music to the likeness of a flute being played near a waterfall with soft chirping bird almost made me look around. In walked a guy wearing an apron and asked me to change into a gown. I was suddenly alert-dim red lights, gown, guy-all seemed too red-light-y for my own good. But what the heck, my mom had got it done and survived it to praise it, so who am I to act all touch-me-not. Reasserted henceforth that wackiness runs in our ‘genes’, even when we wear a salwar kameez-okay, very poor joke, I know.

And there I sat on a plush, cushioned seat all set to be experimented on. Why do the thirties have to be so hyped everywhere as the warning knell to watch out for, just because they want to sell their stupid anti-wrinkle and age-defying creams and ‘you are worth it’ hollers...rather all a bunch of gobbledygook? I so love this word and wait to use it at the first hint of hinting at nonsense. Yes, I wrote this post just for it! So I was given the head wash and some cream was lavishly spread out on my strands and roots, enveloping just my head but giving me an overall feel good. My legs were placed in between an automatic mechanical massager that totally lightened them from knees to the toes, with soft squeezes and pressures so that I almost felt after a while as though I had no legs at all-and that was a good thing by the way.

So then began the unexplained aren’t you lucky that you are on a page where even ‘the unexplained’ is explained in such great lengths? The guy could create magic with the so right movements of his fingers. He used the pressures to unlock every tired and knotted vein running through my head and spine and the rest of the body took to the impulse and let me be free. It was the most relaxing head massage I ever got okay the most relaxing of the two official saloon massages in my lifespan and I think I even closed my eyes for long gaps in between as though I presumed I was being transported to the ethereal and I would open my eyes and ask, "Mein kahan hoon?" Of course the best was yet to come. The ‘hair’ spa then culminated into the disentangling of my neck, arms and shoulder build up and also of the back-over the gown of course! And I thought I’d died and gone to heaven and there Yamraj himself was welcoming me saying that the back massage is the heaven’s way of a shake hand and I am nodding in unadulterated pleasure wait, isn’t Yamraj supposed to be at the entrance of hell? Then who the hell guards heaven-damn, my mythology!

Thereafter there was hot steam treatment, some equally hot coffee with yummy nachos along with a mayonnaise cream dip nopes, I don’t go there for the free food, a hair wash again and conditioning and a very well pampered me. Two hours of such indulgence that I almost felt spoilt. My tresses caressed my top like Solomon’s silk! I thought the hair clip would fall off, it became so soft and smelt and felt so sexy.

Okay, I have been trying very hard to evade using this word but I think if I do not I shall explode (with no puns intended) and the essence of the feeling would not be conveyed just as well. The experience can be defined as good as being orgasmic! Phew! There! Said it!

And you know what else did I say, which I can’t believe till now that I actually said it that day to the hair spa guy- “Your wife is a lucky woman if she gets this kinda massage!” Yes, extreme gratification tends to cloud my thinking and vocal abilities. And he just smiled shyly in response, interpreting it god knows how and showing his tobacco stained teeth in his own version of a gratified expression.

When I returned home and told my beloved how unbelievable was the experience, he mocked me saying that I only loved it so because I got close to an actual massage by a guy although it was just in my head-literally and otherwise. And also was added that since I had got it done, he should also be fairly given the freedom to get a massage from a woman whenever we go to Thailand. Alright I said and then mumbling under my breath, as long as I get to pick the woman and praying in the next breath that the sexed up country also has obnoxious and ugly women available for these stupid services instead of the just-out-of-magazine-cover models, using whom they have spoilt the imagination of half the Indian men! And as soon as I agreed, his suspicious eyebrows now got raised even higher wondering what exactly happened that got me convinced so quick.

Ewwwww! I retorted almost offended, not because he had raised scepticism at my Ganga ki tarah pavitra intentions and actions but because he still didn’t trust me to have a good taste. The massage guy was half balding, married and ugly I said, although those hands and their skills didn’t tally with the rest of his body. I also slowly added that I had shed a few grands in taking a package of 15 hair spas at such a heavy discount that he would be super proud of me as a thrifty and prudent home-maker and not to add the hot hair one.  

This was prior to Seeya happening and while I took 10 of those in the next six months, I have managed to avail just three in the last year. The second last just happened today and hence the nostalgia and the super feel good. If you have already got it done, you know what I am saying and certain 'chochlas' come guilt free. If not, try it once and preferably by a man, for sorry my genderkinds but this requires a certain amount of strength and knowing a woman’s head-all puns intended!