Hair Scare and Dove to the Rescue.

I have to admit that I have been a careless teenager. Especially when it came to my hair. 7 years ago, during my prime teen years, I was more of an outdoors kind of person and since I am blessed with long, straight and slightly wavy hair, I hardly thought I needed to take care of it. It was just hair on my head and I used to pull it into a pony tail, without even combing my hair at times, before venturing out of the door.

During lunch hours at college, all my friends talked about was hair-fall sufferings and also show-casing excessive concerns about a few gray hairs here and there that they all seemed to be plagued upon. I usually got lost in my own thoughts during these conversations. The only thing I used to be concerned about during those days was when the class hours would end and what snack granny would have prepared back home. And thus during one of those “boring” conversations, one of my friend brought me back from my “snack dream” with a pin pricking question: “So, Neha. You used to have such thick, lovely hair when you were in school. What happened to it?”

And her words reverberated all around my empty brain as this type of question to moi was a first and I replied to her after two minutes of shocked silence. “What? What do you mean? My hair has always been like this even back in high school.”

“No it wasn’t”, pitched in my other friend to my deep misery, “I bet you can’t put two thick plaits like you used to put during those days.”

“Of course I can, but I won’t. This is college for Christ’s sake. I don’t want seniors to come and rag me for going all “gauramma” here ok?” I replied irritably.

“Ok, then let’s go to the rest room and check out if your plaits are as thick as they used to be.  You can take them off again”.

So off they dragged me to the ladies room and I knew I had gotten myself into a spot I didn’t want to get into the first place. As one of my friend finished braiding my hair, I turned towards the mirror and I was shocked to see how much volume had been lost in those plaits.

“My god, is this some kind of a joke?” I exclaimed.

The other girls tried hard not to giggle but they consoled me and from then onwards even I got into those long and painful conversations of protecting one’s hair by sharing various homemade remedies.

Each week I tried new things. My mom and grandma worked judiciously by applying coconut oil, neem oil, lemon-mix oil et al to my scalp and hair. And as a result, my already oily skin got oilier by the day and my forehead started to house the dreaded pimples. Shampoos are not so good at removing oil from hair and mom always warned me from resorting to different shampoos as they contain a lot of chemicals. As a result, once a week I had to resort to Shikhakai powder and my allergy towards the irritable thing increased. Shikhakai is a really good natural product for hair, but it’s a nightmare for those who are allergic to its smell. My skin used to turn red and itch at the contact of it, and so I had to stop using it eventually.

After 5 months of this horror show, I literally used to run away whenever either my mom or granny used to come to me with a bowl of oil for my scalp. I had had enough of trying to take care of my hair. My hair had definitely grown longer at a faster pace because of these age-old oil therapies but I was definitely not satisfied with the torture I was enduring.

Anyway, with the hectic classes and assignments and other things ruling my life, I barely had time to have a decent breakfast, let alone spend five extra minutes to tend my hair. As this hectic schedule continued, my carelessness towards my already unmaintained hair grew, if possible to another level.

Two years later, I had finally graduated from 12^th and was in my first year of engineering. Two years if carelessness regarding my health due to various factors like hectic college and tuition hours, tensions, eating junk food rather than fruits and veggies and lack of proper sleep had finally taken its toll on me. Obviously I had gained weight and keeping that aside, my lovely hair looked less lovely now a days. And damn those gray hairs. I could see them hiding amidst my tresses, almost evading my notice. And though my hair was long, it looked really thin and dull these days. The dandruff problem was going out of control now and it became really hard to maintain because after every head bath, my hair would get oily and itchy by next day. And I wasn’t even using oil for my hair!

I must confess I used to jump from shampoo to shampoo very frequently those days. In a year, I might have used five to six different brands of shampoos in a vague attempt to control hair-fall and dandruff issues. Obviously it was all those heavy chemicals that were causing all this damage.

I had had enough of all this shampoo business. But there was still one shampoo that had escaped from my notice somehow.

One day at a shopping mart, I was causally walking down the aisle, in search of the Dove soap. I found my Dove Exfoliating Bathing Bar and in the next shelf I found the Dove Deodorant that I had been meaning to use since a month. Then I remembered that the Dove Deep Pure Oil-Cleansing Face Wash I purchased the last time was almost used up. So off it went into my shopping bag. Then in the next row, I came face to face with Dove range of shampoos and suddenly I was hit with a strange epiphany. How on earth did I end up using almost all of the Dove products except the shampoo and the conditioner?

It was like the answer was right there and I had failed to take note of it before. I literally worship the dove soap and the dove deodorants, mainly because of their mildness and lovely smell and the soap really gives my skin a smooth effect. Obviously if the soap and the deodorants worked, then shampoo should work too.

After my last Shikakhai and horrible chemically inflicted shampoo scenario, a new shampoo from a product company that I was already familiar about was a welcoming sight. So I judiciously bought the blue Dove Damage Therapy Shampoo and Conditioner.

This time, I was determined to make things work for me. So it was bye-bye for most of the junk food. And a hello to all the fruits and veggies. I started to feel better health wise and my oily skin condition was finally reduced and my hair was starting to breath now.

And you know what? Within the next two months I could clearly see a positive result on my hair. It was growing long again and hair-fall had reduced visibly and the split-end problem was almost nil. But the grey hair was still there. Shampoos can’t rectify that. So from last two years, I’ve started visiting the salon to get a nice hair colour from a really good brand. And I feared Dove might not be able to help me out with coloured hair, but as it turns out, I just needed to change from the Intense Repair Shampoo to the Advanced Colour Care Shampoo.

And now my hair has more volume, and the colour treated hair looks better than ever before. All thanks to Dove and some common sense to maintain a healthy diet from my part.

And that was the end to all my hair problems. All is well that ends well. What say?

P.S: Technically I can compare Dove products to Google. When it comes to Google, apart from using the Chrome browser and the Google Search, people end up using Gmail, YouTube, Google+ and Picasa web albums. Even Dove is similar to Google when it comes to its universal usage. Women are most likely to end up using Dove soaps, deodorants, body lotions, face wash and of course Dove range of Shampoos and conditioners. 

This post is written for the "Dove Damage Therapy Contest" and my post on Indiblogger can be found here.

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