personal · wellness
No magic serum. No miracle pill. Just my grandmother’s voice on a phone call, an onion that made me cry twice, and ninety quiet days.
Okay. I’ve been wanting to write this for months and kept chickening out, so I’m just going to do it tonight, in pajamas, with cold chai next to me. If you’re reading this — hi. If you’re reading this at 2am after pulling another clump out of your hairbrush and staring at it like it personally betrayed you — I see you. I was you. Honestly, I was you for almost a year.
The night I noticed it properly was nothing dramatic. I’d just washed my hair, ran my fingers through it, and a whole little nest came out. I remember standing in the bathroom not crying, just… quiet. The fan was making that soft clicking sound. I held the strands in my palm and they felt almost weightless. That’s the part that scared me — how light it was. Like nothing. Like it didn’t even fight to stay.
For months after that, I did the thing we all do — pretended it wasn’t happening. I tied my hair up so the parting wouldn’t show. I avoided photos with the flash on. I started parting my hair on the other side, then the middle, then back again, like I was decorating a wound. At work I’d touch my crown a hundred times a day, very casually, just checking. Just checking.
And then, of course, the 1am Google rabbit holes. PCOS forums. Thyroid checklists. Reddit threads that ended in either “go see a derm” or “you’re dying.” I bought biotin. I bought a serum a friend swore by — sixty euros, smelt like alcohol, did absolutely nothing for me except give my pillow a stain. I went to a dermatologist who looked at my scalp for forty seconds and said, “stress.” Cool. Thanks. That’ll be ninety euros.
I think the worst part of hair fall isn't the hair. It's the slow, quiet feeling that your body is leaving you in tiny instalments.
My grandmother called me one Sunday — she always calls on Sundays, like clockwork — and somewhere in between asking if I’d eaten and complaining about her neighbour’s dog, I told her. I don’t know why. It just fell out of my mouth. “Naani, my hair is falling a lot.” There was this little pause. And then, very matter-of-factly, like she was telling me how to make dal, she said: “Beta. Onion. Oil. Sleep. Stop drinking so much coffee. Three months. Don’t be impatient.”
I almost laughed. It sounded too simple. It also sounded like every aunty on the internet. But here’s the thing — I had nothing left. The expensive stuff hadn’t worked. So I figured, fine. Three months. I’ll do this her way.
I’m going to be honest about these because I think most blogs lie. None of these are glamorous. Two of them smell. One requires you to plan around your social life. But they’re the ones that worked for me, in my body, on my scalp.
my little recipe —
The first few times, I sat on the bathroom floor with my hair wrapped in a towel, feeling slightly ridiculous, scrolling reels with onion juice tingling on my scalp. There’s no elegant way to do this. You just do it.
my little recipe —
I didn't expect this — but the night I started oiling my hair properly was also the night I started sleeping properly.
I won’t make this a whole diet plan because I’m not a nutritionist and the internet has enough of those. But here’s what I actually changed, and what I noticed:
Soaked almonds, every morning. Six of them. Soaked overnight, peeled in the morning. My grandmother’s instructions. I felt silly for the first week and then I just… kept doing it.
One egg a day. Boiled, scrambled, whatever. I’d been semi-vegetarian for years and was genuinely low on protein.
A real plate of greens. Spinach, methi, whatever was in the fridge. Cooked in ghee, not boiled to death.
No more 3pm coffee. This was the hardest one. I replaced it with jeera water, which sounds tragic, but it stopped the 11pm wired-but-tired feeling.
More water. Less doom-scrolling. I know. I know. But both of these mattered more than I wanted to admit.
Week 1–2
I almost gave up. The hair was still falling. The oil felt sticky. I kept checking my pillow every morning like a maniac.
Week 3
First time I noticed the shower drain wasn’t a horror movie. Maybe placebo. Maybe not. I didn’t care. I cried a little.
Month 2
Standing under the bathroom light, I saw them — soft, fuzzy, stubborn little things at my temples. I took a blurry photo I still have.
Month 3
A friend asked if I’d done something different. I said no, then yes, then started telling her everything over chai. That’s why this post exists
Here’s the thing — not everything worked. Rosemary water did absolutely nothing for me, sorry to the entire internet. Rice water made my scalp itch. The fancy “ayurvedic” supplement I ordered from an Instagram ad gave me a stomach ache for two days and I threw it out.
What surprised me the most? Sleep. Not the oil, not the onion, not the almonds. Sleep. The weeks I slept seven hours, my hair behaved. The weeks I didn’t, it didn’t. I wish someone had said that to me at the start instead of selling me a serum.
The other thing — kindness to my scalp. I stopped tying my hair into those brutal high ponytails. I switched to a wooden comb. I stopped washing every day. I stopped touching my crown a hundred times a day to “check.” All these tiny things added up to something.
The hair came back the same way it left — quietly, in instalments, and without making a big deal of it.
Listen. I’m not going to promise you anything. I don’t know your scalp, your hormones, your stress, your story. But if you’re standing in your bathroom right now holding a small clump of hair and feeling like your body is quietly leaving you — please don’t panic-buy six things off Amazon tonight. Close the tab. Drink some water. Tomorrow, start one small thing. Just one. The oil, or the almonds, or the going-to-bed-by-eleven.
Give it ninety days before you decide it isn’t working. Be boring about it. Be gentle with yourself. And if all you do tonight is close your laptop and sleep — that already counts as starting.
with love, and a head full of soft new hair,
— kashish jain
