Straight Hair ! ! !

I see people with straight hair quite often . . . rather young children. And it’s not only straight hair they have . . . the hair would be quite colourful. Colourful . . . well, that would depend on how you see it.

Medical textbooks describe such children as having straight and hypopigmented hair with interspersed areas of reddish brown. Quite an uneviable design for your hair. Of course, the downside is that the hair would be a bit brittle, dry and easily pluckable. However, that’s if you touch it. Who bothers to touch nowadays. It’s the view that matters.

Couple of weeks back, I had such a boy in my outpatient department. 

It was quite obvious that he had kwashiorkar – a form of malnutrition which we commonly see in this part of the country. A malnutrition which occurs because of a diet deficient in protein.

We’ve had a statement from the Prime Minister of the country that malnutrition is a national shame. It seems that 42% of the children of our country are malnourished in some form or the other. In my state, Jharkhand, the percentage of stunted children is a shameful 57%.  

Quite difficult to believe this when you know that this is the same country that on a regular basis sends satellites to space . . . our engineers are the most sought after in Silicon valley . . . our cricketers are World Cup class . . .

Well, the next time, you go to some of the poorer areas of our towns or cities, be on the watchout for kids on the street . . . begging or loitering around. Look at their hair. They would have straight hair. It may look unkempt. But, it would be straight.

I’ve googled a picture and put in here . . . I'm sure you noticed the picture of the child in my post mentioned above. Not a difficult thing to achieve for a lower middle class family. 

And can you believe it? We’ve people who would end up spending quite a lot of money to have hair such as this . . .when one can have such hair by cutting down on your food intake. The downside is that is you could have some side-effects like a bit of bloating, a cramping pain in your tummy because of the hunger and some skin changes.

Well, with the increase in cost of living and easy availability of junk foods, I would not be much surprised if I find quite a lot of our folk with straight hair caused by poor nutrition.

This post is in response to a blog writing contest arranged by Sunsilk on the straight hair experiment.