Cutting my curly hair myself turned into a healing self-care ritual

I was only six years old when my hair was subjected to unthinkable violence. No, there wasn’t a Miss Trunchbull character swinging me around by my pigtails—it was simply my first disappointing encounter with a parlour wali aunty. Growing up, I had a bushy mane of thick, curly and impenetrable hair, which meant that my parents were perpetually trying to figure out how best to tame it. Eventually, it was decided that my hair was to be kept short. So, one evening, the three of us tumbled into an auto rickshaw and headed to a nearby salon.

The hairdresser examined my unruly locks with poorly concealed disgust before exclaiming, “What am I supposed to do about this?” It turned out to be a rhetorical question because she promptly picked up a pair of scissors, and with all the emotion of a butcher slaughtering a goat, just snipped off my whole braid. In a flash of a second, my long, curly hair was gone.

Hanging on by a hair

Over the years, all my haircuts have been similarly underwhelming (a bad haircut doesn’t need to ruin your life, though). Instead of the bouncy curls I’d wistfully dream of, I’d be left with unsightly bobs that made me bear an uncanny resemblance to a spotted, spore-bearing member of the fungi kingdom. After diligently sticking to the curly girl method for several years and finding out that my hair soaked up product faster than the potholes in Mumbai flood with water, I’d finally decided that curly hair was too intimidating to work with. I began flat-ironing my own hair.

But, even once I’d started wearing my hair straight, my experience with haircuts didn’t improve—maybe I was just terribly unlucky with hairdressers, and it surely didn’t help that I always struggled to communicate exactly what I wanted. A year ago, at 22, I was desperate for a change and visited a hairdresser to trim a couple inches off my length. I can only imagine she was seeking revenge for the time I visited the parlour wali aunty next door instead of her, because she proceeded to chop off a whole extra inch of hair and left my ends uneven and choppy.

I have no confrontational skills to speak of, so I quietly handed her a 500-rupee note and scurried out without a word of protest. But I’d already made up my mind—it was time to take matters in my own hands. When I had frizzier hair, the idea of giving myself a haircut seemed to be one DIY too far, but now that I had a smooth, manageable mane, it didn’t seem like it should be all that hard.

The big chop (at last)

A few months after the parlour fiasco, my hair had grown back to its original length, just a little below my shoulders. So at 1am on a Saturday night, I found myself standing in front of my bedroom mirror—hair strewn all over my face, craft scissors in hand, a YouTube tutorial from 2011 playing in the background, and a haunted look in my eyes. The time had come. All I had to do was chant ‘Bloody Mary’ three times and the ritual would be complete.

I divided my hair into two sections along the middle parting and got to work. As I stretched my strands taut and carefully snipped off three fingers’ worth of hair, I felt my thoughts start to spiral. What if my hair turned out to be ridiculously short? Or stuck out at a comical angle? Would I need to wear a ridiculous wig like Madhuri Dixit’s character trying to pose as a vampire in Yaarana?

But as I kept going, with each lock of hair that fell to the floor, it almost felt like my hands were acting out of their own volition—sectioning, stretching, snipping in a rhythm of their own. I felt a newfound sense of confidence spread through me. I had neither the skill nor the nimble touch of a hairstylist, but only I knew exactly what I wanted and I could work to get there at my own pace. In a world where we outsource most of our needs, I was finally privy to the joy of doing something entirely on my own. Is this what it feels like to be self-sufficient?

There was something else that felt invigorating too. Until I was 13 years old, I would dread Sunday nights because that’s when my mother would drag me to the bathroom and wash, condition, and detangle my chidiya ka ghosla as I shivered in a bathrobe. After drying it, she’d vigorously tie my hair back until my forehead appeared the size of Pangea and instruct me to let it stay braided all week long. In school, I’d watch enviously as my friends pushed away their wispy bangs during recess, all while feeling like my hair didn’t really even belong to me. But that night, giving it the shape and form I wanted, I felt like I’d reclaimed ownership over my hair.

My euphoria, however, was rudely interrupted a few minutes later when I turned around and discovered that my hair was slightly longer at the back than at the sides. Later, a friend delicately broke the news to me that I looked eerily like Dora the Explorer; it didn’t help that both of us also stand at a towering five feet tall. But, the exhilaration of cutting my own hair trumped all else, and I was determined to stick to it. If nothing else, at least I wasn’t shelling out 700 rupees only for it to look bad.

The art of a good haircut

It’s been almost a year since my first attempt and I’ve already given myself four trims, getting progressively better at it each time. After diligently watching countless YouTube videos, I’ve come away with invaluable tips and tricks, too. For example, I’ve learnt that it’s helpful to divide your hair into multiple sections so you’re working with manageable chunks of hair and can chop them more evenly. Stretching your hair too taut is a no-go because it makes it harder to know how much you’re actually cutting. Plus, it’s better to work in increments—start with small, precise cuts and gradually work your way up.

While the jury’s still out on whether it’s better to cut your hair while it’s wet or dry, you can always figure out what works best for you. But as a rule of thumb, dry cuts let you accurately see how your hair falls on a day-to-day basis, while wet ones allow for sharper lines. And remember that your scissors can hugely impact the precision of your cut, so make sure to invest in a good-quality pair. Personally, I haven’t switched to hairdressing shears just yet, but at least my poor hair is no longer being subjected to blunt-force trauma by my craft scissors. Instead, I’ve taken to stainless steel ones, which seem to do the job just fine.

In my experience, cutting your hair straight across also also lends it a blunt, boxy look and robs it of movement, so it’s a good idea to try point cutting, a technique that involves holding the scissors at an angle and making vertical or diagonal snips, leaving you with a softer, more blended look. Layering is another way to bring your hair to life, so don’t shy away from toying with the face-framing bits—keeping them longer or shorter to accentuate your face shape.

I’m elated to announce that my haircuts now elicit murmurs of “Wow, you did it yourself? I would’ve never guessed,” and a couple of friends have begged me to trim their hair too. While I’m nowhere close to being an expert, there’s solace in knowing that cutting my own hair is a small gift of joy and agency I can give myself from time to time. And unlike a java chip frappuccino (another small gift of joy), it’s completely free.