Drying hair with towel or dryer

In the act of drying one’s hair with a towel, one comes closest to recreating the sheer physical pleasure of a bird or dog shaking off water from its body. Except here, it’s just our head, and which doesn’t do the jhatka but the towel courtesy our hands. It is also the only regular ritual by which we actually feel our head, considered the ‘room’ we ‘occupy’.

Towel-drying is traditionally seen as a pleasure slightly different for men and women. For men, it is usually considered a utilitarian task, a moment or two or three in the ‘darkness’ under a towel alone with oneself. For women, the hair-drying process is seen as a nuanced art form that the likes of Raja Ravi Varma well captured.

But it’s not the towel alone that brings the drying pleasure. The whir of the dryer is a meditative experience. The sensation of hair blowing as if in a hot storm makes for a controlled tempest that is so very comforting and comfortable, especially as the temperature drops.

In the quotidian act of drying hair, we find the pleasure of ourselves in our extremities – in our crowning glory through a happy hair-raising experience before the hair settles.