Hair helps mark and identify the passage of time.
When we think of time passing, hair isn't the first thing that typically comes to mind. Instead we might picture a clock, a calendar, or the changing of the seasons. But in The Namesake and The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri ingeniously uses hair to identify and expose time.
Time is a huge theme in The Lowland--it's the focus of Gauri's graduate research and comes up again and again throughout the novel. One of the first major points where the idea of time is wrestled with is when Bela is having her hair combed by Gauri. "I want short hair, like yesterday," Bela says. "It had been months ago that Bela's hair was short. And at first, this was what Gauri told her. She explained that it took more than a day for hair to grow long again. She told Bela that her hair had been short perhaps one hundred yesterdays ago, not one. But for Bela, three months ago and the day before were the same" (178). For Bela, the cutting of her hair became a marker of time itself. Since it took no time to cut off her hair, she thinks it should take no time to grow it back again. The cutting of her hair, the shortness of her hair, became its own symbol of time, much like a clock or a calendar. When her hair was long, that was yesterday. Now that her hair is short, that's today. The concept of hair and time became intertwined in Bela's mind.
But it's not only in Bela's mind that hair and time are connected. We see it when Gauri cuts her hair short after coming to America (169) and keeps it that way for the rest of her life (292). Cutting her hair marked a new time in her life. Just like for Bela, the haircut represented a new beginning--a new today. But, it also marked an end to the passage of time for Gauri. She never grew her hair out again, never allowed a new today to take hold. Instead, Lahiri used Gauri's hair to represent how she's frozen, unable to move on after the death of Udayan.
One of the most moving and emotional scenes in all of Lahiri's novels is the death of Gogol's father, Ashoke--and the entire experience centers around Ashoke's hair. When Gogol goes to identify his father's body, "the only thing that feels familiar is the mustache, the excess hair on his cheeks and chin shaved less than twenty-four hours ago" (172). As such, the only part of his father's body that he can bring himself to touch is his hair. "He wonders if he should touch his father's face, lay a hand on his forehead as his father used to do to Gogol when he was unwell, to see if he had a fever. And yet he feels terrified to do so, unable to move. Eventually, with his index finger, he grazes his father's mustache, an eyebrow, a bit of the hair on his head, those parts of him, he knows, that are still quietly living" (172). What's ironic about the way Gogol views his father's hair--as the only part of him that's still living--is that hair is actually the only part of our bodies that is dead. This is why cutting your hair, dying it, perming it, etc. doesn't hurt--each strand of hair is dead. Yet, for Gogol, his this hair transcends time and is a connection to his father, even after he's passed away. It's the only part he can bring himself to touch because it's the only part of him that's still the same in life and death.
Since hair is so closely tied with the idea of time and aging, it only follows that hair also plays a significant role when it comes to death. This is particularly seen in the Indian death tradition of tonsure. When an immediate family member passes away, male family members are expected to shave their hair. There are several reasons why this ritual is performed--tradition, superstition, and as a mark of grieving. But no matter the reason behind the tradition of tonsure, one fact remains the same. It marks a new time in the life of the family member who shaves their head. A time their loved ones will never be around for. From that moment forward, the hair on their head will grow on without the deceased. The ritual is a literal representation of time, death, and absence.
Scene from the movie The Namesake showing Gogol with his shaved head after his father's death. It is interesting to note, however, that in the book no mention is made of whether Gogol actually shaves his head as per tradition.
Hair is also used to beautifully demarcate the line between Gauri's past with Udayan and her present. Gauri remembers an intimate night with Udayan, where he undresses her and "drapes her hair around her shoulders" (278). But, as she remembers, "the hair sheds into his hands, strands of it scattering onto the bed. Then the weight is gone, it turns short again, of a coarser texture, streaked with gray" (278). What a beautiful description of the passage of time--it literally slips through Udayan's fingers as strands of hair. And, not only does the cut of Gauri's hair demarcate the past from the present, but so does the color. Her once completely dark head of hair is now streaked with gray--a universal symbol of aging and the passing of time. Gauri tries to imagine Udayan aging, coming back from the past to meet her in her present and the image she's able conjure up involves his "flat stomach softening. Gray hairs on his chest" (279).
A similar moment also happens in The Namesake. Gogol, who struggles to find his place, his identity, has trouble imagining his own future since he feels like an outsider, a wanderer no matter where he is. So, when he goes away with his girlfriend Maxine to her family's cabin, "he realizes that this is a place that will always be here for her. It makes it easy to imagine her past, and her future, to picture her growing old. He sees her with streaks of gray in her hair . . ." (156). When envisioning her future, it's her hair that he marks the possibilities, her aging. Hair is undeniably tied to time in this way.