Of evergreen hair and weeds
-Written by Dr. Geeta Sundar
Hair has a weird life cycle – anagen, telogen, catagen in periods of intermittent growth and rest. It’s probably the most curatively and creatively loved and hated entity represented in the world. Hair is pride. But sometimes hair is pain. Hair can be joy, a form of beauty, and sometimes all it can represent is frustration.
People love it. People hate it. People work around it so much, especially in the cosmetic world. Some find respect only with its lush coating over their scalp. Some others only know happiness when they have a luxurious hair cover over their prickly head. Some others, aware of the hair-deficient areas, keep fumbling, fiddling, touching the surrounding hair, maybe in an unknown, involuntary means to stimulate its growth back. Others with autoimmune or dermatological concerns transplant it, or get an artificial bob sutured to their skin.
Whatever it may mean or depict to an individual, hair is resilient, in my books. Hair is smart and persistent, it is strong, and a marker for victory. Because, no matter what the status is, hair shall grow back. Each day, each second, each millimeter, it will grow and elongate till it reaches its sprout.
Chemotherapy – hells yeah, no problem.
Radiation – bring it on! It will continue to grow.
Surgery, razor cuts, blade trimmers, shavers – no matter the means of the device for the slice, no matter the blow delivered to the scalp and the amazing cranium, and brain underneath, or the vital structures down below, hair will find a way.

As a neurosurgeon, or any surgeon for that matter, hair is trivial to me. It’s there – it’s fine. It’s not there – also fine. It’s cumbersome – I’ll remove it, but if it’s silent and out of my way – I’ll let it stay. It’s opinion or presence is meager to affect my surgery – akin to weeds growing in a garden.
When I dig to plant something new, I’ll remove the weeds, but if I’m not gardening, I’ll let them just grow there in the ecosystem. Unhindered. Forgotten. But of late, I’ve understood a whole new facet into the world of hair. Hair represents profit, money, looks, status, endurance, health, acceptance, joy, improvement, placebo and a marker for prognosis.
Hair is so important for people, you can’t forget it, you can’t ignore it, that when I counsel about hair being chopped/shaved off in a particular area for surgery, the first response I usually get is – “how much will be cut?” and followed by “will it grow back?” These questions take priority over the actual neurosurgical procedure and its notorious risks.
The smarter, older women understand the consequences of getting only their temporal or parietal hair shaved, adorned with a surgical scar and a mess of the surrounding hair bangs. And they are usually the ones to request a whole head shave. The men on the other hand are touchy, very possessive and quite often not comfortable to let go of even an inch of their hair. However, if I were to take consent for a head shave for a patient who is unable to consent, the family almost immediately agrees.
Literature often states that head shave is not a must for surgery, and doesn’t increase the risk of infection, but we tend to inculcate shaving as it eases with surgery retraction and suturing, and decreases risk of granuloma formation. Denuded skin will always pose an increased risk of infection, but it’s not significant.
And then when I see my post-op cases on follow up, walking with a luxurious film of spiny, silky black hair over their scalps, despite the mess of the razor cut we constructed, I am mesmerized with life and its ability to regenerate. Hair finds a way. Life finds a way. We find a way. As a friend of mine once told me, as we were walking along the road, stopping me to get me to focus on the grass growing between the pavement tiles. “See?” He said, pointing to it. “Life always finds a way.” So, so true. Life finds a way. I’ll leave it at that…