Like many young South Asian children, I grew up with weekly hair oiling sessions. To help boost our scalp health, hair length, and more, my grandma used to sit us down and intensely massage each of my cousins with a cup’s worth of oil- a ritual passed down to her from her own mother and was one she swore by. My grandmother had a full head of hair up until she passed at 87.
When us girls would find ourselves with monthly cramps making it difficult to live our daily lives, our moms would boil ajvain water, rumored to have relieving properties and digestive benefits, with the added bonus of a hot drink soothing our insides.
As a child, I used to get sick often, and my father would suggest haldi doodh, or turmeric milk. As we now widely know, turmeric is known to have immune boosting properties. Outside of permanently staining fingernails and white jeans, it’s actually very good for you, or so they say.
These at home fixes may sound familiar to a lot of us. Growing up, a lot of us were pushed to follow these beliefs when it came to our well being, because they were tried and true by our ancestors. For me, though, these very quickly became the source of an ever difficult schooling experience.
I spent most of my formative years in a primarily Caucasian town, I quickly began to resent my roots and shun these ideas, as the evermounting pressure of fitting grew heavier and heavier. In fifth grade, I came to school with coconut hair, and boys teased me asking what smelled so bad. Those same boys are probably oil pulling now.
In seventh grade I stopped bringing home food to school, I was too embarrassed by the smell and the constant questions. That year a white girl walked into class flaunting her chai latte.
As I grew beyond my hometown and was exposed to new cultures, I stopped thinking twice about these things. In our freshman year dorm, my roommate and I had hair oil nights, we made turmeric masks, we meditated, we reveled in our South Asianess.
After I graduated, I took yoga classes, I started making turmeric shots to take every morning, my inner child beamed. I found ways to take back my culture and years of hiding from it to appease others. I felt complete.
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