How not to tear your hair out (and other summer stories)

Summers in India meant hair lice. This came along with ripe and juicy mangoes, trails of dust along the cobbled streets, and the distinct smell of heat (a concept you can fathom only after spending seventeen days in a row in 110 degrees Fahrenheit). Nevertheless, hair lice had to be the highlight. 

Hair lice are tiny parasites that live in the hair. Though scientifically defined as 'harmless', th little bloodsuckers are enough to drive one crazy. They bite, cause extensive itching, multiply like rabbits, and lay eggs in the same hair that they live in. They are nearly impossible to get rid of – believe me, I’ve tried.

Every summer growing up, my cousins and I would meet for an annual reunion at our grandparents' house. This reunion, given its large scale, called for a lot of coordination before each family embarked from their respective city. Numerous phone calls were made across states with conversations revolving around arrival and departure times, transportation from the train station, and the routine question of 'does anyone have lice?' This last question was the most important, given how contagious hair lice are. Depending on the range of answers, the summer would be planned accordingly, decisions would be made, agreements signed and very occasionally, a brave soul or two would chop their hair off to avoid any sort of parasite drama.

Nevertheless, every summer at least one of us arrived with a breeding ground for a head. So when we were finally reunited, we would spend a significant part of our holiday scratching our heads together (not as a result of any sort of intellectual pursuit). Invariably, we would have our mothers and grandmother lubricate our locks with strong coconut oil to make it easier to de-infest our hair. This would be followed by the whipping out of The Lice Comb, a device with incredibly sharp and close-set teeth that I'm pretty sure was, at some point in history, used as an instrument of torture. The Lice Comb had many notable abilities, the best of which was ripping our hair out in the most painful manner possible, closely followed by actually pulling out the lice.

One of many remedies- and this was usually used as a last resort, given the chemical nature of it- was a liquid medical marvel that promised to kill all lice if you bathed your hair in it. We used a clear green solution that smelled of very strong floor cleaner. Actually, it may have been just that, packaged, marketed and sold otherwise.  At some point during our summer shenanigans, this 'floor cleaner' would be brought to our doorstep, and we would all have a fun morning together- the green liquid, our mothers, and us.  None of us were the least bit happy during this exercise of lathering our heads with this toxic chemical. We had to quite literally be tied to the bed post to cooperate. Though we knew it was for the greater good, we thought it was a waste of our precious time, which could otherwise be used to steal sugar cubes from the top most kitchen shelf, run around the center staircase making 'music' with steel vessels, climb up the dangerous water tank for a spectacular city view, and essentially drive my grandmother crazy. 

Looking back- and this is something none of us really noticed in the moment, given the 'dangerous' nature of events- those tiny insects played their part in the larger scheme of things. Without their help summer breaks would not have been half as entertaining. There was a certain amusing twist to three generations of female figures locked up in a room battling a common cause. Growing up, a number of things brought my family together in times of need- the good, the bad, and the ugly. But nothing as seemingly insignificant as these wingless, stumpy legged parasites.