Where do hairs for fashion wigs and hair extensions come from?
A woman gets her head shaved at the Thiruthani Murugan Temple in Tamil Nadu.
The hair donors, many of which are poor, never receive a penny in return.
On average, the temple receives between 50,000 to 100,000 devotees everyday.
Tens of thousands of them undergo ritual shaving or tonsuring.
To this date devout Hindus have been helping Vishnu pay off his debt by offering him their hair.
In earlier times, the hair was thrown away into the river.
Photo credit:tirumalatirupatiyatra.in
Everyday between 500 to 600 barbers working in rotation shave over 20,000 heads.
The hair is then untangled and sorted based on length, grades and colors.
Then it is washed, treated, and dried under the sun.
Some hair have never been cut before.
The longest strandsanything above 18 inchesare the priciest pick, at roughly $300-$450 per kilogram.
The best quality hair sometimes sell for as much as $800 per kilo.
The shorter hair is used to stuff mattresses, create oil filters or extracted for amino acids.
Great Lengths supplies hair extensions to 60 different countries and over 40,000 salons.
The most striking fact is the disconnect between the high-fashion buyers and the impoverished suppliers of this commodity.
Many worshippers are unaware that their hair is being used to create hair extensions 7,000 miles away.
Most dont even know what hair extensions are.
Venkateswara Temple is just one of many South Indian temples engaging in this business.
Altogether, Indian temples bring in a total of over $100 million yearly from hair sales.
Venkateswara Temple, Tirumala.
Photo credit:Chandrashekhar Basumatary/Flickr
Sources:The Guardian/BBC/WSJ/The Yale Globalist/NY Times
