When Sapna Bhavnani says she is “back,” it’s without the pomp and circumstance.
There is no dramatic re-entry, no nostalgic retelling of former glory. Instead, there is presence: measured, grounded, and unmistakably deliberate. After years immersed in filmmaking, cultural discourse, and activism, Bhavnani has returned to hairdressing in Mumbai, not as a reinvention, but as a continuation of a practice that never truly stopped.
“When the physical salon spaces shut down, Mad O Wot did not disappear. It simply became Nomad O Wot. I was cutting hair outdoors, under trees, in the open air, from my sustainable base in Kamshet,” she says. Bhavnani stripped the act back to the essentials: hands, time, trust, and environment. That period recalibrated her relationship with hairdressing. “Bringing Mad O Wot back to Bombay now feels less like a return and more like I’ve come full circle,” she admits.
WOT LIES BENEATH
Mad O Wot was never separate from her work in cinema or activism. Hair fed everything else. “What is cinema without hair? What is activism without a little madness?” she asks, half-smiling, entirely serious. Like any long-term creative practice, it demanded a pause. “Burnout is not failure, and creative people should be allowed to stop without justification. This return is not about proving relevance but about resuming work from conviction, not adrenaline.”
Launched in 2004, long before disruption became industry jargon, Mad O Wot was always process-led, anti-spectacle, and uninterested in trends. Bhavnani is quick to clarify that there is no “new philosophy” driving the salon today. “Nothing has been rebranded or softened. The rebellion was always there; it simply continues without dilution,” she quips.
In an industry now obsessed with speed, content, and community, Bhavnani does not chase differentiators. “Those words have been overused to the point of irrelevance. Mad O Wot has always operated on instinct.”
Over time, that approach drew people who connected with the work, without the need for labels or marketing language. “I’m an introvert, but I work intensely, and I prefer focus over noise. The point has always been to do the work properly.”
This return isn’t about
NOSTALGIA
. I’m building again from
CONVICTION,
not
ADRENALINE.
-Sapna Bhavnani
TALES UNTOLD
As a storyteller across mediums, Bhavnani does not separate narrative from hair. “Every head carries stories of class, caste, gender, migration, rebellion, and conformity. The salon becomes a space where those stories surface naturally. Hair is never just hair; it is memory, performance, grief, and joy,” she says. That awareness influences everything from how the team touches hair to how conversations unfold. Narratives are not imposed; space is held.
Her long-standing commitment to the female gaze translates seamlessly into leadership and salon culture. For Bhavnani, the female gaze is about agency, not aesthetics. “In leadership, it manifests as transparency and consent-driven work environments. In hiring, emotional intelligence is valued alongside technical skills. In client engagement, there is no coercion, no selling of insecurity, and no hierarchy between stylist and client. Everyone is seen, not assessed,” she says.
Years of filmmaking and festival curation, often without sponsors, have sharpened her relationship with risk. Running a festival for six years without a safety net taught her how to trust impulse, hold uncertainty, and take full ownership of decisions. That instinct-led, hands-on, and unapologetically independent way of working is exactly how she runs Mad O Wot.
AGAINST THE GRAIN
Looking ahead, Bhavnani sees Indian salons facing an unavoidable reckoning. “Shrinking green spaces, rising costs, exhausted workers, and increasingly conscious clients demand new business models,” she says. The old approach of airless spaces, relentless scaling, and staff burnout is no longer sustainable. While franchising Mad O Wot was never the goal, the absence of genuinely green, ethical salon spaces has pushed her to think about how this practice can exist responsibly. “Mad O Wot is not a chain, but a working model that is ecological, ethical, alive, and unapologetically radical,” she signs off.