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Yuvi's Mundan Chronicle

It's a ritual in us Punjabis to perform mundan a.k.a. tonsure ceremony on the second Dussehra of baby's life. This Dussehra was Yuvi's second. We started planning the ceremony way in advance because of the COVID chaos. No one was invited, It was just us plus Yuvi's paternal grand parents. We requested a known-trustworthy barber to come and chop his hair.

Sumit and I knew that Yuvi is going to cry inconsolably during the ceremony. That's what kids do. We were mentally prepared for that. We had a plan in mind to process the things smoothly. So, before the barber arrived, we made Yuvi sit on his high chair and made him watch his favorite rhymes on Youtube. We thought that way he will be distracted and the barber will be able to run the trimmer in no time. For those who don't know, the mundan is performed in 2 phases: in first phase, the barber run a trimmer through the hair and in second phase he runs a ustara to clean the remaining hair. Yuvi sat and watched the rhymes peacefully till the barber entered the room. As soon as he felt the barber touching his hair, he started shouting and crying for help. We somehow held him and within 4 minutes all his hair were chopped off. Those seemed to be the longest 4 minutes of my life. I felt awful to see the boy cry non-stop. We gave Yuvi 2 minutes' break before processing to the ustara part.

For the ustara part, i made him sit in my lap, his face facing towards me and all the other 3 family members held his hands, legs, and head; respectively. It took 7-8 minutes to clean his head. He was very tired of crying by now. So he sobbed and sobbed while hugging me. Once the show was over, we calmed him down with some toys and water. He then took a bath and forgot whatever we did to him.

I could not help but think that how traumatic those 15-20 minutes must have been for my little boy. How he must have felt about us going against his will. I felt horrible to put him in such a situation. But my dad says that all our rituals have some scientific theories behind so i googled and found out that "the natural growth of hair on a baby's head is uneven. Shaving off the hair from the baby's head helps in proper and healthy growth of hair and the ceremony is performed to give the kids freedom from diseases, to give them strength, health and vigour." 

Well, it made sense to me. Just when i was feeling thankful for the ritual and for the forgiving nature of kids, i saw my husband walking out of the bathroom in a bald avatar. He had chopped his hair too, to give Yuvi some company. We had a group hug while thanking God for all his blessings. 
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Comments

kanika said…
Beautifully described, Aparajita! Loved reading it.
26 October 2020 at 04:00
Damini said…
Thats true...we do this mundan for a better growth of hair...next set of hair is heavier, healthier n stronger...the best part is yuvi🤩🤩 got a partner(Sumit), he won't feel strange at all whenever he would touch his head now.
26 October 2020 at 07:38
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