Ketaki Jani Redefines Beauty, The World Admires!

Alopecia! Sounds alien, doesn’t it? Many people in this world have been suffering from this medical condition in many parts of the world, yet many of us haven’t even heard of it before. Out of the millions of people who deal with this problem every day, very few have the courage to speak about it and deal with it in a way that others are inspired. One such person is Ketaki Jani.

What’s Alopecia?

Ketaki Jani tells us what Alopecia is and then takes us through her journey of dealing with it. She brings to our notice that Alopecia is a disorder where the sufferer gradually loses chunks of hair, eventually leaving the person completely bald. The disorder not only takes away the hair of the sufferer but also his or her confidence, will live, and courage to face society. However, Ketaki didn’t let Alopecia take all this from her. The story of how she managed to do that is breathtakingly beautiful!

At 40, when she found that she had lost a chunk of hair, she didn’t consider it to be serious. She thought it is an ordinary hair fall issue and her hair will grow back sooner or later. Despite that, she visited a doctor and realized that what she has is a serious medical condition and not a simple hair fall. She started using the medicines prescribed but before she could finish the course, she lost all her hair within six months. What Ketaki Jani has is Alopecia Areata, one of the three types of the disease, which is a total loss of hair.

Ketaki Jani’s War and Victory

Apart from dealing with the disease, the sufferer has to deal with tons of taboo associated with a lack of hair. Speaking about this, Ketaki Jani says that people abroad have to fight only the disease, but people in India have to fight a million pairs of eyes watching and judging them constantly. Ketaki has experienced situations where people would abandon her from auspicious social gatherings considering her a bad omen. She explains that since it is common in Gujarati communities to shave a woman’s head after her husband’s death, lack of hair is considered very evil.

As a special officer for Gujarat in Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Production, she had her reservations about going to the office after the diagnosis. She would wear a scarf and go to the office at 8 am while the others came at 10 am and she would leave the office at 8 pm and everyone left. This way, Ketaki avoided meeting and interacting with anyone. This gradually pushed her into depression.  At a point, Ketaki felt so hopeless that she wanted to end her life. But something was stopping her.

The thought of how her children would feel or how her pets would react to her death made her drop the idea. She says it was her family’s support that helped her battle depression and conquer Alopecia. Her husband strengthened her belief by saying that a wig should solve the problem and it is not a big deal at all. Although she accepts it as a good idea and believes that anyone comfortable with a wig should go ahead and use it, somehow she couldn’t bring herself to use one. She felt she was hiding her real self from the world.

All these taunts and discrimination stopped affecting Ketaki after she won the battle against depression. Today, she walks into her office on time, without a scarf, and goes home with everyone else. The beauty of Ketaki’s story lies not just in the way she deals with the disease, but in how she inspires others to do the same.

In May 2017, when Ketaki Jani was casually scrolling through Facebook, she came across a beauty pageant for married women – Mrs. India: She is India. She filled in the form, without any expectation and wrote “no hair” in the column asking questions about hair. Within a couple of hours, she got confirmation that she was selected. Ketaki not only won Mrs. People’s Choice Award but also made it to the top 10. This also gave her an opportunity to go to Dubai.

Teaching Others to Embrace Alopecia

There was no looking back after that. Whenever Ketaki Jani gets a chance to walk the ramp or go on stage, she has only one goal in mind – to tell all the people suffering from Alopecia that they’re beautiful as they are. She says she was diagnosed with the disease at 40, but her heart weeps for those girls who experience this early in life and are traumatized because no one wants to marry them or give them a job. Ketaki points out the hypocrisy in the society where everyone claims to be looking forward to unique people, but when they actually meet unique people, they ridicule and reject them.

Ketaki Jani invites people on Facebook to ask her any information regarding Alopecia and says that she feels immensely happy when people message her their success stories and give her credit for the same. Ketaki aims at inspiring people to do whatever little they can while fighting Alopecia, even if it is not something as big as participating in a beauty pageant.  She proudly carries a tattoo on her head, which she says is a representative of her world.

Ketaki says God gave her a canvas to carry a tattoo in a place where no one else would usually have it.  Ketaki Jani’s inspiring story is being penned by senior journalist Praful Shah in Gujrati. He plans to have translated into Marathi, Hindi, and English so it can reach a larger group of audience. The book is titled Agnija, which means Daughter of Fire. Let’s hope that the book touches all the lives dealing with Alopecia and inspires them to achieve their dreams.

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