I was born with a head full of hair.

At least, that’s what my mother tells me. The doctor held me up for everyone to behold and the nurses marvelled at the dark coils on my tiny scalp.

When I was 1, my mother refused to take me to Tirupathi to shave my hair off as a sacred offering to god. She claimed that God had blessed her child with beauty, not vanity, and there was nothing unholy about the gorgeous mane on my melon-sized noggin.

When I was 5, I was experimenting with safety scissors in art class and cropped off a good three inches of hair. My mother nearly flayed me alive and made me write an apology note to my fallen locks.

When I was 9, I was at a friend’s birthday party and I heard some girls sniggering in the corner of the room. They called me names and said I smelled of coconuts. I ran my hands down my oily braids and bit the inside of my cheek, trying to will the tears to go back from whence they came.

When I was 13, I went out for ice cream with a small group of classmates. I’d tied my hair up in a bun because of the blistering heat, and everyone said they’d never seen me with my hair pinned up before. They liked it, and so did I.

When I was 15, I convinced my mother to let me get a tiny strip of hair dyed red. She drove me to the salon herself and watched with pursed lips as the stylist snipped away at my split ends, chatting with me about how much I could experiment with my tresses. The entire time, I could feel my mpther’s eyes boring into the back of my skull.

When I was 16, in a fit of boiling teenage angst, I stormed into my bathroom, cut off nearly two feet of long, straight shiny hair, stuffed it into a mug and presented it to my mother with a smug look on my face. She was devastated, and her reaction gave me a moment of satisfaction before the reality of what I’d done descended upon me. Oh god.

When I was 18, i was sick of what I looked like. I bought myself a packet of bleach and some hair dye and three hours later I emerged from my bedroom with a shock of blue framing my face. My mother screamed and dropped the bowl of peanuts she was shelling.

A week ago, after having blue hair for nearly three years, I decided I wanted a change. I rooted through the boxes in my uncle’s storeroom and found my grandfather’s old shaving razors. I FaceTimed my parents to show them what I’d done, and my mother let out an elated cry. She called me brave. My father called me beautiful.

My sister just called me bald.