<p>Remember headbands? Almost every teen heart-throb back in the 80s sported one. There was Poonam Dhillon with a striped one strapped to her forehead, two long plaits dangling by the sides. She’d be wearing a tracksuit, all set for a morning jog, but all she’d do is chase Kumar Gaurav who’d be singing a song that had been especially composed to best leverage the entire set of two expressions that he owned.<br /><br />There was Reena Roy wearing glittering headbands, sequinned and stamped. A Greek-goddess-meets-bar-dancer kind of avatar. This look would be the cue for the audience that a dance competition was going to take place shortly.<br /><br />Depending on the hero’s dance acumen (usually ranging from ghastly to average), the sidekick would have to peg his output a few notches below that. The audience would now want a headband over their eyes.<br /><br />Then, there were tribal headbands made popular by Meenakshi <br />Seshadri.<br /><br />She’d rob a jewellery store before coming to the movie set — adorned in necklaces reaching her pelvis, earrings the size of excavation equipment, and headbands made of coins/bells/teeth of extinct animals. Maybe the trick was to blind the hero with all that bling so that he had no idea what he was saying ‘yes’ to. I heard recently that she relocated to the US. Hah, I knew it! How long could she have gotten away with those jewellery heists?<br /><br />As a kid, I badly wanted a headband. Really badly. Like a kid of these times would want an iPhone 7. My prayers went unanswered for a long, long time. I felt hopeless. I even doubted that there was a god.<br /><br />Then, one day, I found that my sister had forgotten to lock her cupboard. There it sat — the red-white-blue headband. Was this really happening? My heart was pounding faster than the disco beats of a Bappi Lahiri number. I picked it. I ran my fingers down the soft, fluffy strip, that crisp Velcro fastener.<br /><br />It had to happen fast. Before she finished taking her shower. Happy bells pealed in the air. Birds chirped, and golden sunshine anointed me as I stepped into the garden. Jeans, sweater to match (and the sound of violins), the headband strapped to my forehead. Rishi Kapoor would have been so proud.<br /><br />As that decade got over, so did the obsession with hairbands. I no longer spotted this accessory on our heroines. Maybe they diverted that material to their costumes. One headband can definitely clothe more than one these days.<br /><br /><br /></p>
<p>Remember headbands? Almost every teen heart-throb back in the 80s sported one. There was Poonam Dhillon with a striped one strapped to her forehead, two long plaits dangling by the sides. She’d be wearing a tracksuit, all set for a morning jog, but all she’d do is chase Kumar Gaurav who’d be singing a song that had been especially composed to best leverage the entire set of two expressions that he owned.<br /><br />There was Reena Roy wearing glittering headbands, sequinned and stamped. A Greek-goddess-meets-bar-dancer kind of avatar. This look would be the cue for the audience that a dance competition was going to take place shortly.<br /><br />Depending on the hero’s dance acumen (usually ranging from ghastly to average), the sidekick would have to peg his output a few notches below that. The audience would now want a headband over their eyes.<br /><br />Then, there were tribal headbands made popular by Meenakshi <br />Seshadri.<br /><br />She’d rob a jewellery store before coming to the movie set — adorned in necklaces reaching her pelvis, earrings the size of excavation equipment, and headbands made of coins/bells/teeth of extinct animals. Maybe the trick was to blind the hero with all that bling so that he had no idea what he was saying ‘yes’ to. I heard recently that she relocated to the US. Hah, I knew it! How long could she have gotten away with those jewellery heists?<br /><br />As a kid, I badly wanted a headband. Really badly. Like a kid of these times would want an iPhone 7. My prayers went unanswered for a long, long time. I felt hopeless. I even doubted that there was a god.<br /><br />Then, one day, I found that my sister had forgotten to lock her cupboard. There it sat — the red-white-blue headband. Was this really happening? My heart was pounding faster than the disco beats of a Bappi Lahiri number. I picked it. I ran my fingers down the soft, fluffy strip, that crisp Velcro fastener.<br /><br />It had to happen fast. Before she finished taking her shower. Happy bells pealed in the air. Birds chirped, and golden sunshine anointed me as I stepped into the garden. Jeans, sweater to match (and the sound of violins), the headband strapped to my forehead. Rishi Kapoor would have been so proud.<br /><br />As that decade got over, so did the obsession with hairbands. I no longer spotted this accessory on our heroines. Maybe they diverted that material to their costumes. One headband can definitely clothe more than one these days.<br /><br /><br /></p>
