From champi to shampoo
Assimilation in this country is necessary to pass the purity test to live here.
Even if your birth was here too it seems these days.
It never used to feel like this; and maybe this is a symptom of the shock tactics of online discourse that it suddenly feels you can’t really call this ‘home’ anymore.
I have made a conscious decision to make sure I live to my own identity - an amalgamation of two different realities, and honour both.
But I’ve kind of given up on the idea of chasing belonging.
What’s the point?
We’re only where we are as long as we’re conscious.
And since the idea of being a Sanatani involves more than one life, it seems very futile to expend all my energy in arguing with online strangers why I’m as British as they are.
But I remember growing up thinking about the difference in things between the cultures and what I used to trade off to ensure I was part of the fabric of this society.
Hair oiling was one such phenomenon.
I wouldn’t do this as often as say my Indian cousins in India would.
And I’d definitely not go to school with oil in my hair at all.
If you go to India, you’ll see children go to school with copious amounts of hair oil in their hair. The girls are usually donning two platts, and the boys have their own styles too.
But oil, usually coconut, is a feature that both genders have.
They were taught a method of self-care very early on.
This simple cultural ritual leads to growing up with hair oiling as a staple habit and to beautiful locks of mahogany.
I avoided it though.
It felt like I would be bullied because it wasn’t the norm as much; and that I’d stand out like a sore thumb because I decided not to continue this Ayurvedic tradition that evolved from beyond this border.
I suppose this was the principle of assimilation in a tangible form.
Trading off a tradition that was there to help me in fear that I would be seen as an oddball.
But now seeing so many social media influencers in the West making hair oiling a huge part of their routine, I laugh as much as I do when I see turmeric lattes in Starbucks.
This was the stuff I used to refuse to drink growing up because ‘haldi wala doodh’ was disgusting.
Now it’s trendy.
Hair oiling also indicates another thing - the power of ‘champi’ - a form of massaging to your head while the oil is being added.
Champi by an elder (be it your Mum, aunts or grandparents) with hot coconut oil not only felt like a wonderful massage to your head, it also felt like a tool to be closer to your family and your traditions.
Champi also has another significance in that it brings the two cultures together.
It evolved to make the word ‘shampoo’.
The word shampoo has the core concept of massaging at the heart of its meaning - a far cry from just assuming it’s a liquid in a bottle that tells you to lather, rinse, repeat.
Sake Dean Mahomed is credited, in part, for introducing the art of shampooing to Britain in the 19th Century to the point he became the personal ‘shampooing surgeon’ to both King George IV and King William IV.
Born in Patna, Bihar in 1759, Mahomed served in the army of the East India Company as a trainee surgeon.
He was also an entrepreneur donning the hat of many firsts beyond shampooing too.
He was the first Indian person to publish a book in English, and also the first Indian to also open a restaurant in Britain.
The Hindoostane Coffee House was opened at 34 George Street in London in 1810, but closed a couple of years later due to bankruptcy.
Shampoo has its roots in the Sanskrit word ‘capayati’ meaning ‘pounds’ or ‘kneads’.
It evolved into the Hindu word ‘champo’ (or champi, as I’ve nostalgically explained it above), to mean ‘to press or knead the muscles’ and relates to the concept of massaging.
Shampoo seems to have entered the English language in around 1762 to mean ‘massage, rub and percuss the surface of the body to restore tone and vigor’.
We still call the tradition of hair oiling ‘champi’, and the head massaging tradition done by the elders of the family is unbeatable on so many levels.
But it serves as an unbreakable link to the concept of movement between countries, and a reminder that with the movement of people comes with it the movement and evolution of language.
I’m less worried about what people think of hair oil these days.
It seems to be all the rage.