Greys

Growing up, I watched my mother carefully cover her greys. It was probably genetic—my grandmother had a full head of silver hair as long as I can remember. Or perhaps it was the weight of their early lives that showed up so visibly. No one can say for sure.

My mother, the second of five daughters, worked as a nurse. In the little free time she had, she would meticulously dye her hair. Back then, I saw it differently—almost dismissively. "What’s the point?" I thought. "Why not embrace the greys? Why bend to society’s idea of beauty? Be yourself." It felt like the right kind of rebellion for my age. And maybe it wasn’t entirely wrong—but it was incomplete.

What I didn’t understand then was the quiet, complex idea of self-image.

My mother had grown up with responsibilities far heavier than mine. She tutored children just to afford her schoolbooks. She dreamed of becoming a teacher like her elder sister, but circumstances decided otherwise. Nursing was practical—it guaranteed a government job, a steady income. She didn’t really have a choice.

Whenever I asked her what she liked doing at my age, she would simply say, “I don’t remember.”

She and her sisters saved whatever little they could from their salaries to buy gold—security for marriage. Even that gold wasn’t always theirs to keep. It could be used to afford other more pressing needs of the family. 

After I was born, she had to return to work when I was barely one and a half months old, traveling nearly 100 kilometers away. I grew up watching her get ready every morning, quietly preparing for another long day. My father would help pack her tiffin. We lived in a joint family, so she was spared the kitchen, but not the exhaustion.

Sundays were different. We would visit her maternal home—those days were lighter, filled with laughter, conversations, and sometimes small, sharp disagreements that I didn’t fully understand. What stayed with me, though, was the rhythm of it all—the closeness, the chaos, the resilience.

And through all of this, there was her -sometimes misplacing her umbrella, occasionally losing her purse, but always moving forward. Tired, yes. But steady.

Looking back now, I see her hair differently. That dark color wasn’t vanity. It was care. It was her way of holding on to herself—of feeling seen, perhaps even loved—in a life where so much of her had been shaped by duty.

For a long time, I chose not to cover my greys. Maybe it was a quiet act of defiance, a way of asserting my independence from her choices.

But today, as a mother to a six-month-old baby, I understand something I didn’t before. 

And I find myself letting go of that resistance.