TRENDS

@LEISURE

70 THE WEEK • JULY 14, 2019

aggi. Medusa. Jhadu. Jungli....

These are nicknames that

Pallavi Juneja from Delhi

grew up hearing, thanks to

her curls. In school, she would comb and

plait her hair into submission or lop it off

into a ‘boy-cut’. Her mother would insist

on a ponytail and the stubborn parlour

lady would bullishly uphold hair-smooth-

ening. “When I straightened my hair for

the fi rst time at our school farewell, peo-

ple really liked it. But a part of me hated

the fact that I had done this to myself.

It felt like cheating. This was not who I

was,” says Juneja, whose web searches

in college for nourishing Indian curly hair

would lead her to pages which exported

wigs and weaves extracted from Indian

scalps.

Today, the chirpy 26-year-old market-

ing executive moonlights as a “curly hair

consultant”. She has a blog, The Curious

Jalebi, and has done YouTube tutorials on

granular management of curly-wavy hair

in India. She is also one of the admins of

a popular Facebook group called India

Curl Pride (ICP). There, fellow suff erers

socially conditioned to hate their natural-

ly curly hair learn to rage and rant, share

and care, own and fl aunt their wayward

manes.

But Juneja wants to give credit where

it is due. “It was blogs and tutorials by

black women which saved me,” she says.

“They talked about how much their jour-

ney with their natural hair was misunder-

stood. They came up with techniques and

methods for hair care in a very hostile

environment. They were the pioneers of

the natural hair movement that inspires

scores of women struggling with their

curls across the world.” Even before join-

ing ICP, Juneja had read Curly Girl: The

Handbook (2001), the bestselling book

by Australian hairstylist Lorraine Massey.

The book propounds the Curly Girl (CG)

method—hair care without the use of

sulphate shampoos, combing or chemical

relaxers. This is the central philosophy of

ICP as well. Corkscrew, fractal, botticelli

or wavy, the book is a bible for curly-

cues. The 40,000-strong DIY-ers at ICP

constantly dissect and simplify it for

each other.

Nicola Okero from Kenya, a fellow at

The Global Education and Leadership

Foundation in Delhi, had moved to India

seven months ago. And, she could not

fi nd a salon or hairdresser who could

MM

PHOTOS

ARVIND JAIN

Don’t touch my

Indian women are fi nally reclaiming

their curls au naturel

BY SNEHA BHURA

curls

Pallavi Juneja