I have hair growing out of my eyes.
Well, not eyes as in my eyeballs — that would be almost as bizarre as crude comedy being treated as a criminal offence — I mean the region around my eyes. The socket area.
I noticed this development a few days ago, when I was shaving. I cannot shave to save my life. It is a skill that has always eluded me. My razor and I are never on the same wavelength, and this dissonance often leaves me with bristly tufts under my jaw or on my neck, making my face look rather like a Dalmatian. On this occasion however, the problem was further north. After I’d razed my cheeks clean and washed my face, I looked in the mirror and could have sworn I saw Shah Rukh Khan from Baazigar staring back at me1.
Upon closer inspection, I realised there was a fine fuzz surrounding my eyes, as if my eyebrows had grown curious and sent emissaries to explore the hitherto hairless expanse to their south. I was accustomed to dark circles — trying to remember the difference between a gerund and a participle can give you those — but this was a shadow that stretched from sideburn to sideburn.
I did what any man who realises he looks like a racoon would do. I called out to my wife.
‘Simran! I look like a racoon!’
‘Hmm… no, not a racoon exactly. Now if you were to say a lemur…’
‘What? No! Look at my face! I have hair all around my eyes. Like some hideous mask.’
‘Ah, yes. I do see it. How fascinating.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Buddy, you’re vastly overestimating the amount of attention I pay to your face.’
‘How did this happen!?’
‘Maybe it’s a side-effect of those medicines you’re taking? For the… you know… the balding issue.’
‘Oh. Ah. Right.’
I began losing hair when I was still in University. It was the fault of my maternal grandfather, of course. Research shows that male pattern baldness depends on genetic influences and while there are multiple factors at play, your mom’s dad may be the one who scripts your downfall. As Vox explains:
If you’re a man, you got your X chromosome — which either has or does not have the variation of this gene that promotes baldness — solely from your mother. There’s a fifty percent chance that she in turn got it from her father — so if your maternal grandfather had the X chromosome genes for baldness, there’s at least a fifty percent chance you do too.
My grandfather was a lawyer, and gloriously bald. For as long as I could remember, his dome had been bare and smooth. Friction, as a concept, was alien to it. If you were to rest your hand on his head, your fingers would glide right off, as they might a non-stick frying pan.
While baldness contributed to his aura and made him a commanding figure, I am not nearly as lucky. I was tonsured once in my youth. The barber had smiled through the shearing to put me at ease. But when the job was done, I remember he had flinched upon examining his handiwork, clearly regretting the role he’d played — à la Dr. Frankenstein — in bringing a grotesque creature into this world.
I’d sworn then that I would never go bald again. I was innocent enough to believe it would be a matter of choice.
I suppose there is a tragic poetry in the fact my hair loss began soon after I started studying law. Perhaps unbeknownst to me, it had been a package deal all along: if your feet walk the professional path your grandfather charted, then your crown, too, must bear his inheritance. In any event, the die was cast, and there was nothing I could do. Before I’d even gone on a date or received my first paycheck, a vacant spot had appeared on the top of my skull, like a coin that glistened every time it caught the sun.
I was crushed by its presence, appalled that a mere twenty-year-old should have to deal with such cruel vicissitudes. I later learnt my troubles were not all that unusual.
Nearly a quarter of men ‘who have hereditary male pattern baldness start losing their hair before the age of 21’. By the time they turn 35, almost two-thirds of them ‘experience some degree of hair loss’. And when you consider the finding of an Indian study that a majority of the male population (aged between 30 to 50) suffers from this predicament, you begin to feel less lonely. It does not, however, make you feel any better.
The thing about people who love you is they are bloody good at lying to you. They assess your query, judge your emotional state, and respond in a manner that is certain to soothe. In those University days, whenever I broached the subject of my faltering follicles, my mother would dismiss my fears.
‘You’re overreacting’, she would say. Or, after taking a quick look at my nervous, bowed head, insist, ‘It’s not that bad, don’t fret.’
And I would believe her. Just like the time I believed her when she told me a skintight orange knitted T-shirt looked good on me because I had, in a moment of delusion, set my heart on it — when in all honesty, she should have told me I looked like an undercooked sausage and would forever regret buying, and wearing, that ghastly garment.
I was well into my twenties, when I ignored her euphemisms and visited a hair treatment clinic. They ran some tests, peered and picked at my scalp, and soon I was sitting in front of a trichologist who was flipping through my reports.
‘Tsk,’ he said. Then, after a pause, he added, ‘Tsk tsk.’
‘Is something wrong, doctor?’
He shook his head and sighed. ‘It is as I suspected’, he declared, with the air of a judge pronouncing a death sentence. ‘You almost certainly have androgenetic alopecia.’
‘I see. Is there a cure?’
‘Look, I’ll be honest with you. We cannot stop your hair loss. If it’s in your kismet to be bald, what can we do?’
I gulped down a sob.
‘But we can slow down the process.’ He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. ‘We have a range of lotions, shampoos, and conditioners. You should start using all of them. I will prescribe some medicines too, obviously. You may also benefit from laser therapy… let’s put you down for six sessions to begin with. Oh, and we have a special comb that reduces hair damage and massages your scalp. You should get it, it’ll be helpful. Sounds good? You can collect all of these items on your way out, they’ll have the bill ready. Arre, don’t worry! If none of these work then we will try hair transplant. We are here to take care of this problem. Don’t get stressed! Stress will make it worse, haha. Chalo, bye.’
I left the clinic laden with bottles, prescriptions, a wooden comb, and a heavy heart. The feeling of being overwhelmed, of waging a futile battle, never quite left me. And so, after a few weeks, I stopped going to the clinic and gave up on the lotions and the tablets — but I did use the comb for a good many years.
In The Consolations of Philosophy, Alain de Botton encapsulates the stoicism of Seneca, the first-century Roman philosopher, in these words:
...for Seneca, in so far as we can ever attain wisdom, it is by learning not to aggravate the world’s obstinacy through our own responses, through spasms of rage, self-pity, anxiety, bitterness, self-righteousness and paranoia.
Seneca and I would not have gotten along.
For most of my adult life, I have responded to my cranial drought with spasms of rage, self-pity, anxiety, bitterness, self-righteousness and paranoia2. Whenever my friends cracked jokes about my thinning crop, and I have the sort of friends who revel in such vicious humour, I would reply with a shrug and a c’est-la-vie smile. But once home, I’d stand for many minutes in front of the mirror, parting my hair and wailing in despair.
My wife, in flagrant disregard of our marital vows, had little patience for my shenanigans.
‘If it bothers you so much, just visit a doctor.’
‘I did. They said my fate is writ. I am beyond saving.’
‘That was years ago, you moron. Go to my dermatologist. He’ll sort you out.’
‘Simran, I don’t need davaa. I need dua.’
‘Oh for fucks’ sake…’
I finally agreed a few months ago. Perhaps the island of bare skin that has started appearing in my headshots — unless I crane my neck upwards to offer an unseemly view of my nostrils — is what prompted me to visit a doctor again. A final assault on the enemy, of sorts.
It’s been going rather well, to be honest. There aren’t as many shampoos and lotions and conditioners as the last time — though I wish there’d been a new comb. The doctor is optimistic. My scalp is not as fallow as I’d been made to believe and there is hope for some vegetation yet. I’ve been diligently ingesting all the pills he has prescribed and Simran assures me my pate is not as exposed as it used to be.
These new eye-moustaches I’ve acquired did alarm me at first, but all things considered, it is proof the treatment is working, isn’t it? God willing, what is growing under my eyebrows today, will grow on top of my head tomorrow. Besides, I suppose the next time I visit the doctor, he will be able to address this side-effect.
But even if he can’t, even if he says it is a unique and irreversible condition that will only worsen if I continue the medicines, I wouldn’t really care. After all, a face full of fur is hardly a high price to pay for a more fecund scalp.
Note: Hello! One of the great things about writing a newsletter is you get to discover a bunch of cool people, doing cool things.
Thomas is one such cool person I’ve met online. In his newsletter, Cultural Reads, Thomas shares fascinating bits of pop culture trivia from all around the world. You can read his post about his favourite Indian novels here, and you can click on the link below to check out more of his work. Don’t miss out and as always, thank you for reading!
Sans the hat.
Reminds me of the letter 21 year-old Nehru wrote to his father about hair thinning, “You need not trouble to send me any kind of oil. I detest using too much oil and I do not think it does much good. Nothing in the world will make hair grow if there are no roots left. All that the lotions can do is to keep the hair clean and prepare the way for any future growth.” You’re in good company, I guess!
Have you considered going full Bezos with your hair. This is my backup plan when my head hair thins enough in the future.