Off The Cuff: A not-oft-told tale of Cinderella's dyeing
By Kevin Martin | Dubai: 16-10-2003

This incident could never have taken place in Dubai, ironic as that may seem. Ironic, because although Dubai was carved out of the bone dry desert and has its foundations on oil, its water taps never run dry. Equally ironic, because the incident is situated in India, the Land of a Myriad Rivers, hardly any oil and even less water to go around.

Water was a billion-person-problem long before the population hit that figure and gained us worldwide fame, or notoriety, depending on one's point of view. Ella, the daughter of jazz trumpeter Eric Roberts, had been named after the famous Miss Fitzgerald, in the hope that she might one day replicate that fame and ensure that the Roberts' family career in jazz continued with another comma.

Eric was scared of full stops. His two older daughters, Holly and Jasmine, were causing some concern. They listened only to Abba and The Rolling Stones and laughed uproariously when Eric and his band played Honky Tonk Women the way Wynton Marsalis or Dizzy Gillespie would have.

By the time she was twenty-one and Eric had started believing in the power of the full stop, Ella had re-christened herself Cinderella.

She felt she'd become a victim of Third Daughter Syndrome. Life consisted of hand-me-downs and hours spent in the kitchen.

She tried several techniques to get off cooking: she undercooked, she overcooked, she burned the toast and then the onions; she under-sweetened and over-sweetened the coffee; spiced up and spiced down curries; but each meal was relished as though it was a repast fit for royalty, eaten by candlelight to the strains of Duke Ellington.

Some folk will go to any lengths to stay out of the kitchen, she realised.

But even in her aloneness, Ella had one consolation. Her hair. Neither of her sisters had tresses as lustrous as she did. Long, shiny, silken and red. And when she infused the lot with henna, the glow that emanated from her crown put the setting sun to shame.

On that particular day in question, after a harrowing time in the kitchen carving up the muttonchops, Ella decided she owed herself - her hair, really - some quality time.

She still had an hour or so to make it to office and to her secretarial job. She set about coating her hair liberally with henna paste, using an old toothbrush to work the mixture in lovingly. She would set the world on fire, she thought to herself, even if she didn't have the courage to do the same with the kitchen.

After the customary 'setting' period, when the time came to wash her hair clean, Ella had her first panic attack.

The buckets were empty, courtesy Holly and Jasmine. Mildly fearful, she tried the tap, only to suffer a second jolt. Not a drop flowed forth. Her heart hammered against her ribs as she cast around for a solution. She would have to see this day through, SOMEHOW.

And she did. Wearing Holly's beret, her hair pulled up severely and done in a topknot. She looked like a young Sikh trying to disguise his roots.

How she survived the day, and very nearly started a fashion at office she will never know.

Ella was my sister's friend, and it was she who sternly cautioned her thereafter: Becky, we all know that one can die without water, but there is no way on earth that you can dye without water.

My sister, a third child too, used to recount that tale, years later, and laugh, when she took time out from the kitchen.