Priya had always worn her hair like armor. Long, thick waves that fell past her waist, glossy black with the kind of shine people stopped her on the street to compliment. It was the first thing anyone noticed, the last thing they forgot. Her mother used to braid it every morning when she was small, humming old film songs. Her college friends called it “the waterfall.” Even her ex said it was the only part of her that never argued.
But lately the weight had started to feel different.
Not just the literal kilograms of hair pulling at her scalp—though that was real too—but something heavier. Every time she tied it into a bun for work, every time she spent forty minutes blow-drying it straight so no one would comment on the natural texture, every time someone reached out to touch it without asking, she felt a small, silent contract being renewed: *Stay beautiful. Stay acceptable. Stay the same.*
She was thirty-one. Single again. Living alone in a one-bedroom flat in Jaipur that smelled faintly of sandalwood and yesterday’s chai. The mirror had become a courtroom lately, and she was losing the case.
One Tuesday evening in late March, after another long day of meetings where men talked over her and women complimented her hair instead of her presentation, she came home, dropped her bag, and stood in front of the bathroom sink.
She didn’t plan it. There was no dramatic soundtrack, no Instagram reel building up to the moment. Just a sudden, calm certainty.
She pulled the elastic out. The waves tumbled free. She gathered them into a high ponytail—tight, businesslike—and picked up the kitchen scissors she’d used ten minutes earlier to cut lemons for her water.
Snip.
The sound was louder than she expected. A thick rope of hair fell into the sink like a severed lifeline. She didn’t cry. She didn’t laugh. She just exhaled, long and slow, the way you do when you finally put down something you’ve carried too far.
She kept going.
When the ponytail was gone she switched to the clippers she’d bought six months earlier “just in case” during a lockdown impulse buy. No guard. Zero.
The first pass buzzed straight down the center, leaving a pale stripe of scalp exposed to the fluorescent light. She paused, looked at the stranger in the mirror. Not ugly. Not beautiful yet. Just… new.
She kept going. Side to side. Back to front. Tiny black clippings rained onto her shoulders, her shirt, the tiles. The vibration traveled through her skull and into her teeth. It felt obscene and holy at the same time.
When she switched the clippers off, the silence was deafening.
She ran her palm over the fresh stubble—velvet, warm, alien. No more hiding. No more curtain to hide behind during video calls. No more excuses.
She laughed once—short, surprised—and then went quiet again.
