Change, as I recently came to know, is not everyone’s cup of tea. But I got rid of my looks of fairy Tinkerbell’s long-lost Indian cousin with a hair style strangely resembling a leftover bowl of greasy noodles that somehow conveniently managed to find its way to the top of my head, though many lovingly referred to it as beautiful hair.

But my predicament is that the new hairdo got a thumbs down, but in all honesty I kind of liked the new look. Being the tomboy that I secretly am, the more I looked in the mirror the more I loved what was staring back. But being a girl in a long-haired world has problems of its own. The first one being to convince my conservative but modern family about the need to cut off the one thing that according to them screamed at my very essence of femininity.

So being the not-so-independent 19-year-old that I am, I approached the family court with ample facts and research that would put even the brightest of lawyers to shame only to be denied justice and that too within a matter of mere seconds. So just like any other Indian citizen who felt like they have been wronged by the lower levels of our judicial system, I approached the Supreme court or in my case my grandparents. I sometimes blame the generation gap among many things for all the conservative views that my loved ones hold, but all of my so-called conspiracy theories fail when it comes to my grandparents. You see, I’ve never seen a more modern couple living with so much ease in the 21st century than my grandparents.

So naturally my case was pleaded and it is safe to say that I got a big fat yes. But sadly, that wasn’t the end of it. In a typical Indian society what your neighbours or society thinks of you carry more weight than what you think about yourself or so they say! So, it’s safe to say a lot of my next-door aunties and uncles were surprised to see my new look and a great many of them managed to conclude my recently acquired state was due to an ill-effect of living away from home.

But sometimes amongst the crowd of many a curious and confused faces, I see a friendly face sporting the same kind of look and unknowingly my lips tug into a smile of its own.