contributing writer
Amrit Ramos dropped out of boarding school in 10th grade. After high school she came out to her parents, which, as expected, caused a bit of tension in the house. Gayness can be difficult for an unsuspecting parent. And dropping out of boarding school, well, it had just been such a great opportunity. Amrit’s mom and dad basically accepted both surprises all as a part of their oldest daughter finding her way. But when Amrit announced that she was going to cut her hair, her parents were not so accepting. Tears and lectures went down in the living room.
“I told them that I had been thinking about it for a long time, and I was going to, you know, cut it,” Amrit said. “There was definitely freaking out. My mom was more upset, crying about my hair, than she was about me being gay. I mean, hello! What’s more important?!”
Siri Amrit and Guru Amrit, Amrit’s brother and sister, live at home. After the haircut conversation, Guru Amrit talked to their mom about it. “It was just hard for her to see that the technology, the spiritual technology, that worked for her doesn’t work for Amrit. It just made her sad.”
That spiritual technology is the practice of Sikhism, the fifth-largest organized religion in the world, with a significant following in the West. Amrit’s family is part of H3O (for “Happy, Healthy, Holy Organization”), a lineage of Sikhism in the United States focused on the practice of kundalini yoga. “Other Sikhs think it’s evil,” Amrit explained. Members of H3O keep a vegetarian diet, practice yoga and tantric meditation, and take spiritual names based on their numerology. Since they were born into Sikhism, Amrit, Guru Amrit, and Siri Amrit were named by their spiritual leader, who chose their names based on the kids’ birth dates.
H30 Sikhs usually follow the traditional five-part Sikh dress code, especially the parts that are visible from the outside. It includes carrying a sword and wearing a special bracelet; a special set of thin, white underwear; a comb; and keeping one’s hair intact and under a turban.
“There are a lot of reasons for not cutting hair,” Guru Amrit explained. “When I was kid, I would say, your hair is a gift from God. I guess that’s silly now. There are nutrients in the sun that your hair picks up and bring to the body. The hair on your legs is good for your sex organs, under your arms is the heart, your eyebrows bring energy to the crown arc. I guess it’s that, well, God made you perfect, so don’t mess with that.”
Amrit’s hair, blond when she was a little girl and light brown later on, reached down to her lower back. When her father, Guru Dev, tried to explain his concerns to her, Amrit heard him out, but she had already made up her mind. “He started to lecture me, saying, like, you have to have devotion. If you don’t have devotion, you have nothing! I was like, exactly! What does this have to do with my hair? I just don’t think my spirituality is about my hair. I believe that spirituality is based not on ritual. Ritual is a tool that a lot of people use to become spiritual. But I don’t want my spirituality to be based on that. I don’t want to have to fake my spirituality or delude myself by following the ritual.”
Guru Amrit went along with Amrit to her hair appointment, for support. Amrit decided on a simple cut to just below her ears, framing her face and staying, for now, above her neck. Now she doesn’t have to do anything but wash it and brush it. “Sikhs practice like a universal spirituality, so to me, it’s nothing to worry about,” Guru Amrit said. “She does what she needs to do. Everyone has their own path to God; everyone is getting there. You can do things to be on a more direct path, but everyone ends up in the same place.”
This summer, for her part, Guru Amrit started shaving her legs. “I told my mom about it. She was upset, but it wasn’t that big of a deal.”
“She is so insecure,” Amrit said about Guru Amrit’s new grooming ritual. “The differences between me cutting my hair and Guru Amrit shaving her legs, is that most of her reasons for doing so are very outward. She just wants to fit in better. I don’t really care about fitting in. For me, cutting my hair was a test of my own spirituality, if you will. I told her, Guru Amrit, the insecurity just goes somewhere else. If you shave your legs, you’ll be insecure all the sudden about your armpit hair. Of course, she comes back all, ‘Oh Amrit, you were so right; now I’m insecure about my armpit hair!’ How could I honestly say that I was not cutting my hair because of spirituality, when I had never really cut it before? I was just doing it out of ritual. If anything, this whole haircutting experience has brought me closer to me.”
I met Amrit Ramos in 2007 when we both worked for a local yoga studio. She was in her last few semesters of college, living at home, and working as a yoga teacher and massage therapist.
Amrit has since graduated from college, traveled around Mexico, and become a full-time massage therapist. She maintains a shoulder length haircut and wears a turban only on special occasions. PD
Ann Raber lives in Austin, Texas, with a black dog, a white dog, two cats, and a handsome man.
