To the city that never sleeps

Packing my bags for a night flight to Mumbai, a cheap brochure on Asia’s largest laundry alley in Mumbai catch my attention sticking out at an odd angle from one of my rucksack’s many pockets. “Don’t forget the Dhobi Ghat. Not exactly on your way but you might learn something there,” sneers my roommate eyeing the piece of paper in my hand which she had rudely shoved in minutes before, as a not- so- subtle hint to my supposedly OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) ways.

A day later, I was to hear the name again. Squinting at the angry afternoon sunlight on Mahalaxmi Bridge in Mumbai, I was on the lookout for a young thirty something lady who was assigned by the Tourism Board to accompany me in my tour of the city. If you are a South Indian and on your first visit to India’s commercial capital, you would have arrived into the city with countless warnings about pick pocketeers, eve teasers and rapists echoing through your head. As I waited on the crowded bridge, thoughts flashed across my head and I almost yelped when I felt a small but sturdy poke on my back.

I turn just in time to hear a chirpy. “Manik Walame, Official Tourist Guide from India Tourism Board, at your service madam.” I grinned. It was not very often that you get to instantly like the guide you are assigned to on your travels. Most just nose through tour itineraries.

“Let’s just get out from this mad rush of people and bullocks Manik.I can barely hear myself think.”I shout to the 4’ lady who return my suggestion with a frown.

“But this is our first tourist spot-Dhobi Ghat,” she shouts back her eyebrows narrowed to strongly accompany her response.

“Dhobi what?” I think aloud the familiarity hitting me like a ton of bricks.

“The Dhobi Ghat is a unique feature of Mumbai city and one that has lately been of great interest among tourists from different parts of the world. Their literal translation meaning ‘Laundry Rows ‘, these portions of the city have been a part of Mumbai for over 120 years, the most famous of the lot being the one in….”

“Where the hell did you learn to speak like that, Manik?”

“….Saat Rasta near Mahalaxmi Station”

“Maha…station. Isn’t that nearby,” I shout amidst the din of the crowd as a train chugs into view.

“Its just behind you,” she replies in a mock weary tone.

“Wha…” I turn to look behind me and at what I thought all along was one of Mumbai’s slum pockets. What I actually now notice is a whole new scene of colour and noise with lines of pristine and well starched clothes and beneath them row upon row of concrete washpens, each fitted with its own flogging stone and on which bare chested men beat what look like long slings of clothes.

I remember with a shudder my own college days when laundry was an expensive option on our meagre pocket money and the cloth stone was the only way to cleaner clothes. Washing jeans or bed sheets were the worst of the tasks as the drenched clothes almost often threatened to take our puny bodies along with them at every sling.

“Come, let’s talk to one of them,” I grab my camera and run down the stairs and into the alley with Manik. Frenzied tourists are a common sight in any part of India as the culture and tradition often offers a heady thrill, so I did not stand out with my curious looks.

One would easily be forgiven to think that all the men who were thrashing the clothes were following some invisible rhythm as they took aim, raised the cloth and pounded at the stone, almost at the same time.

Shiva Kumar stood thrashing a bedsheet a bit away from the sudsy small troughs that ran in a criss cross fashion across the area. He stops for a minute to give us a ‘what-the-hell-are- you-staring-at’ look.

Manik walks along to him and warbles in Marathi at an amazing speed and his unfriendly stare is immediately replaced by a warm grin.

He looks at his fellow men proudly at work and then speaks to Manik in a combination of English and Marathi. I tiptoe over to them to get a few answers.

Manik translates, “He says the clothes are soaked in soapy water, thrashed on the flogging stones, then tossed into huge vats of boiling starch and hung out to dry. Next they are ironed and piled into neat bundles. Each dhobi marks a unique symbol or character on garments belonging to a particular household. This is marked in black indelible ink to prevent it from being washed off. Since the dhobi charges are much lower than dry cleaners, they are popular with most households.”

“And why are there only men?”I ask.

Manik puts the question across to Shiva who in reply puffs up his chest and answers in a deep baritone voice and I understand his reply even before the translation.

“It is a man’s job, “says Manik anyway.

My eyebrows narrow for a debate but decide against it noticing his bulging biceps and his throbbing veins as they expand and contract to keep pace with his cloth thrashing. I have always had a deep sense of respect for physical prowess.

“The British made this area for the washermen years ago to wash and starch their clothes and now the people of this area do the washing for the entire city. Today almost 200 dhobis and their families work together in what has always been a hereditary occupation” continues Manik.

Shiva puts a hand across his chest and beams again when he looks squarely at me and says, “We no study but no mistake till today,”

I return the beaming smile.

Quite weary of quintessential indianness being touted to delight the average European tourist, I would have left the continent’s largest laundry alley as just that but my first contact with the city taught me all I needed to know about Mumbai: Everybody survives here and in good measure.

Chai ready!

The slow misty curtain that was a prelude to the monsoon drenched month of July stopped dubiously for a second before it slowly proceeded to clear the air for the first break of light of the day. Squinting at the sharp glare, we tried to grab an extra bit of sleep but were rudely woken up by a tired looking guide who in his eagerness to make an extra penny had urged us, a team of travel writers to pen Kodanad Elephant Sanctuary as the last of the ‘101 things to do in Kerala’ in our itinerary.

“Laksmi is still sleeping but she will be up in a while and then we can play with her,” said Girish, our enthusiastic guide.

Lying on the southern bank of Periyar and cradled among the high ranges, Kodanad was once one of the largest elephant-capturing centres of South India. After the law banned elephant capturing in 1977, the elephant kraal and training centre remained intact and today six elephants inhabit the sanctuary with three of them adept at entertaining tourists. Two-year-old Lakshmi was the youngest and was already famed as a wild child of sorts.

Enticing us with stories of Lakshmi and her troubled past for most of the two-hour journey, we had scarcely noticed the deep rumblings from our empty stomachs. Now as we proceeded to walk towards the sanctuary, an unmistakeable aroma of freshly steamed Puttu and Kadala(steamed rice cakes and chickpeas curry) strongly beckoned us from the roadside.

We located the origin of the aroma to a dilapidated hut that doubled up as a tea stall and looked like it could whip up breakfast for three hungry people. The dark insides of the tea stall had all the bearings of a typical teashop shown in Malayalam movies. Two men were bending low over the morning newspaper; with one of them occasionally reading the highlights aloud well above the old Malayalam film song that filled the small room.

With the only light in the room coming from the window, we could barely make out the silhouette of a lanky frame pouring something noisily from one container to the other. The efficiency was unmistakeable. Caught by a child like curiosity we grabbed our cameras and almost scared Hari out of his concentration.

Born and raised in the nearby town of Perumbavoor(a nearby town), Hari’s father owned the teashop and passed it on to him after his death. While the elder son handled the cash, 32-year-old Hari helped his mother and wife in the kitchen.

The Malayalee’s affinity to tea and teashops are legendary. Jokes like Neil Armstrong reaching the moon jubilantly and being crestfallen on discovering a ‘Kunjappan(common Malayalee name) tea stall’ already there for years, have made the rounds a zillion times.

Despite all the political brouhahas, flashes of globalisation, high literacy rates, cultural facelifts and communal riots, the common man’s teashop have stood time tested and proud. The delicacies and the environment are a rarity. A cantankerous radio, the local gossip, the ever crowing cock behind the shop all in the background of a general laidback air that has this delectable aroma of delicacies unknown to a world of Starbucks, Costa and Café Coffee Day.

A small glass cupboard will boast plates of uzhunuvada, parippuvada, motta baji, ethakka appam(snacks of Kerala)and the like. The teashop owner expects you to ask when it was made so don’t think you might offend him. A passer-by is forgiven for asking as well for the glass cabinet looks antique and unwashed but the wares are mostly fresh.

The average teashop owner expects you to know the requisites before ordering your famous Kerala tea aka One Metre Tea. Our guide shouts “Randu strong with, Oru without”which was unscrambled for us to mean two strongly brewed cups of tea with sugar and one cup without sugar. With a lazy nonchalance, Hari then took the brew from the broiler and stretching two containers as humanly far as possible from each other, he performed a sheer act of brilliance, as the concoction poured in a highly disciplined fashion from container to the other.
All we saw were flashes of the steel containers, which moved effortlessly from one direction to the other and to some strange rhythm without a drop spilling out from them. An impressive and bulbous layer of froth bubbled at the top of the teacup threatening to spill but stayed solemn after a while.
A friend once lamented, “Kerala tea is just froth and nothing else” but the charm lies not in the quantity but in the quality which makes the global Malayalee all the more nostalgic. His down the memory lanes are incomplete without the sweet, thick well brewed and steaming cups of tea that promises to give you a definite high.

We said goodbye to Hari and his teashop, took pictures, played with the elephants,pampered Lakshmi and almost got killed in her loving embrace before we packed bags and proceeded to hit the road back to Cochin.

On our way we passed by Hari again who stood outside his shop for a smoke.Seeing us, he rushed to our side and said,”Chechi Chai ready” (Sister,tea is ready)

Anytime!

Mirage

A wisp from the scented Agarbatti smoke waft towards me--the perfect background to the Kaniyaan’s words as he studies carefully the series of criss crossed lines on my outstretched palm.

After a long pause, he murmurs inaudibly, then sits back thoughtfully.

"Times are not good, kutty," he continues in the Palakkad slang I love to hear so much...

"Go home.You are not meant to be alone. Nobody is. Not even the stars. Even they need planetary movements to support their existence." He closes his books and sets his board aside, a soft wave of 70 years of experience crossing his face as he puts a wrinkled hand on my shoulder and nods his head in a way that reminds me of my father.

Outside,the rains are less forgiving.

Future has a way of arriving unnoticed, I muse aloud. Like the summer rains.

Half way down the ride, the autorickshaw I am travelling in comes to a rickety halt. The driver whisphers a drenched curse and pulls vigorously at a lever beside me.

Twenty minutes later, I am walking down the road, my wet hair hanging by my sides, the numbness enveloping me. I do not know if its the rain or the sharp slivers from my own cold emotions.

A pink board urging to fight breast cancer catch my eye. I stop to read. I see the smiling faces on the board and think of their darkest moments. I wonder if it was like mine. Did their thoughts get sucked in by the tiny nodes that were plugged on to their forehead? Could they feel the lashing waves that frothed at the end of their mouths?

STD ISD PCO

A red and yellow board screams at me. I call the Kaniyaan again. I ask him how much longer I would live. The astrologer in him dissapears and my father's best friend begs me to return home. I disconnect the line during one of his helpless pauses. I know he is praying for me.

My pulse quickens at the urgency I feel somewhere inside my head.Desolation. I know I will dissapear into one of those dark tunnels again. Those unexplainable time warps that gnaw painfully at the ends of my nerves. I usually wake up from those episodes, my throat parched and covered in perspiration.

Today I feel prepared. I will fight them. I remember Achen's and Amma's faces over me. Achen's eyebrows narrowed in perpetual worry, Amma's face pale from crying. The medicines never helped then. The thick ropes did. The local temple priest narrated examples of countless people diagnosed with MPD(Multiple Personality Disorders) who were ‘disciplined by the gods.’ Prehistoric, but Achen and Amma succumbed to some raw reality that worked with the tautness of those ropes where the science behind chemicals failed.

I see a tea shop and step inside. I sit next to one of the surprised faces.The cantankerous noise inside ceases with my presence but an overwhelming stench is too strong to bear. A man in his early forties clad in just a chequered loin cloth rushes to my side, "Can I have a glass of hot tea, please?"I ask him almost immediately.

He looks around for a minute and then giving a wry smile tells me, "This is a toddy shop chechi.For men only."

His last line brings forth a blend of thunderous laughter and hoot-cries.

Of course, it is.How could I not recognise the stench.

I could now feel the knot within me unfurling itself like as if it had lost all hopes to remain taut and diplomatic and was eager to unleash its fury to the hilt.

Clearing my throat, I repeat my request more feebly than I want it to be. The man doesn't understand and my request is answered with more raucous laughter.

I stand up and  feel a strong nauseous wave throw me off balance. Ignoring it, I  march towards the kitchen , my insides threatening to burst out through my head.
A cold wet smell greets me as I enter the kitchen.I look around me for something to silence those countless groans of pain in my head.
Suddenly a noise startles me . I turn behind and see a young woman hurriedly searching for something among the dark silhouettes of the pots and pans. Clad in a knit top, muddied pair of chinos and flip flops, I am surprised to see someone like her within the dark interiors of a rustic toddy shop in a remote town in Kerala.
Murmuring something to herself in an irate tone,  she searches hurriedly among the numerous pots and pans that are now angrily strewn all across the floor.
“ Get out of my kitchen else I will call the police, you mad woman,” a male voice shrieks from the corner. The sharp glare of the daylight from outside prevents me from seeing the person to whom the voice belong. I look beside me and see the girl look at the doorway for a minute, before turning her head away. As if realising that her time was running out, she runs to the tap above a broken wash basin and holding her mouth very close to the rust coated pipe, drink with loud noisy slurps.
I had felt a deep sense of calm seeing her all along that I had forgotten my despair.Yet even as she drank the water, I could feel an inner thirst being quenched. I would have been staring at her pointedly for she suddenly raise her head and wipes wet strands away from her face and looking at me smiles and says, “I think I might not make it this time,Indu.I can no longer hear myself think.”
From beside the basin she takes an ugly knife and slashes both her wrists. There is a loud noise of rushing feet and people trying to jump over the broken shards of glass and pottery.
Suddenly I can only sense two beings in the room: just the two of us. I try to understand her smile but I know fate has delayed me as we look at each other.
Noiselessly she crumples on to the floor, the smile on her face frozen for time.
I had already felt the cold unwelcome touch of the hard kitchen floor.

Down the valley...

Down the valley right on my favourite rock I sat
Stealing the blend of washerwomen’s songs whisked with the jaywalk’s chatter

The evening sun splashed her last rays across the horizon
A low breeze whistled a fancy into my ear

The wind chimed her anklets further
I sank my feet surreptiously into the temptingly chilly beneaths

Hiding the world’s inquisitive eyes , the clouds gathered above
Naked and smiling,I scissored through the thick oblivion below….

A passing mackerel below nibbled at my knee
Somewhere an expectant frog called out for his partner

Stepping back on my favourite rock, I watched the mangrove branches sway
Their fragrant ripeness blending rendering a blossoming air

When lost in the whirlwind of time, I crave for moments I call my own
Its my day down at the valley that I cherish the most

For I see myself the happiest amidst the slivers of moonlight and the mangrove shade
Than all the cheers that the world has to spare.

Yours truly…..Solitude!

Solitude is a virgin for me. Pure, untouched and innocent. She is not nagging and self-centred like her cousin….loneliness. Solitude has an unmistakeable dignity about her, which she passes on to those who seek her. Perhaps a reason why she chooses to be sought and also remain as a shade of a person’s character as much as is expected of her and not be an all pervasive worry like loneliness which shakes you by your shoulders and penetrates into your soul cancerously spreading through you…

I discovered solitude by chance…that doesn’t come as a surprise. I discovered myself also by chance. Both the findings have a common thread running through them. My adolescence. It was then that I realized that the world in me was larger than the world outside me. All of a sudden I would sense the air thick and polluted with coagulated pride, noxious vapours of egoism and edged with acidic concepts of life. All this shrouded in a thin feeble cover called conversation. I would then slip out away from the glare and into My Solitude. Yes, how could I adore something and not call it my own.

Sometimes my solitude would leave me lying for hours under a carpet of stars. sometimes beside a flowing brook. Sometimes as I lay by the side of the village pool on the cold stone steps….strands of my open hair gently kissing the water below as if trying to symbolize my relationship with solitude.

Rains are never a part of solitude for me. With rains…. well there was always a conversation there. Never the silence that epitomises solitude. The showers always rushed to rescue me from loneliness. That’s another thing about solitude. There is a very thin line that separates it from loneliness. A very thin slippery line. Like the netherworld it is very deadly and inviting.

When I hear lonely people speak…I can hear their voices clang like empty vessels in the dark…bereft of hope and drowned in self-pity. They can’t be blamed, I suppose. A condition conceived out of a situation.

I tasted a little bit of loneliness recently. It is like vinegar on your teeth. That irresistibly irritating feeling. And it gives you bad breath…a pungent odour that keeps the whole world at bay away from you. Loneliness gives you a kick though. But of course you need to be a dedicated narcissist willing to wallow in self-pity.

I have felt pangs of loneliness in my childhood but that somehow was never serious enough to matter. I didn’t have many friends….none in fact… but I had a lovely set of parents who didn’t allow the empty hollow feeling to suck me through. Also, like most kids I also had an imaginary friend…I was Indu.She was Lekha.Today I am both.

We would talk to each other…bath together….cook for each other….the days when I would stubbornly insist to have my dinner in my pink plastic toy cooking vessels….and amma would happily oblige…anything to cloak my bones…;)

As my passion for books grew I needed no other companions. Lekha somehow slipped away into the background so subtly that I didn’t even realize that she was gone. My adolescence wielded a pen in me with a taste to dive in to different coloured pots of ink. Soulful was a sky blue…. Ecstasy…an unmistakeable aqua green…Humour ….a naughty bubbly lime green.

For me writing was a late but inevitable sensation I discovered. Yet like her counterparts; hunger and thirst; it had an unflinching need that required to be satiated. I once heard an actor describe his voracious appetite for sex. Raw and demanding. I couldn’t describe my need to write any better.

I was excited at this new rawness in me. I wanted to explore more of me. My craving to write took me initially to quiet corners and later on to serene backgrounds. That’s when I bumped into solitude. Amongst the rustle of the autumn leaves…alongside the breezy southern wind…with the noiseless fall of the dewdrops. An aura first…then a presence and finally a part of me.

Yet, I also realized very early in life that you can’t turn to solitude for consolation for her youth and spirit also brings with them a whiff of immaturity. The moment you seek her wind to dry your tears, she steps aside to let loneliness in. Solitude understands sorrow but her immense dignity and self esteem expects you to lick your own wounds and heal yourself and come to her for some happy blissful swigs.

I have often mused, it must be this rejection that she does at her doorstep that turns many a heartbroken lover straight into the arms of loneliness.

Some days when I get time to stand still and look at myself in the mirror…I see a very bright ornament on my bare neck…My solitude…. bright and embedded with temperately cut stones…the brightest of ornaments that I have… Reflecting on the simple inspiration that she has been for me all along…

I stopped...to turn!

Through the haze that someone else calls life….I saw the yellow post-it note on a breezy Monday morning. Scribbled in my boss’ scrawny handwriting it threw an impromptu punch to my gut.

“Story on Kerala-need it by next week.cheers.Roy”


I threw the remnants of a wrinkled cigarette on the carpeted floor and watched it angrily burn through the blue fibre of the carpet. I could feel the bile rising within me as the post-it note crumpled helplessly in my clenched fist. The bile of something already churned and digested in some past life now made me feel like retching.

It all starts with the kind of promises you make over tiny heavily finger printed mannappams (mud cakes) and athil ithil games. The kind where one chubby hand opens up to take her Amma’s(Mother) hand and there is a quick “Promise, ok” exchanged before you hold hands and run indoors leaving the setting sun behind and just before Achen (Father) comes searching for you….

Today, it looks like somebody else’s life. The chubby hands have grown to be long slender ones. The eyes more sceptic. The eyebrows narrower. They say the smoking and drinking has sunken my 28 year old eyes further down pushing me way up the chronological scale. I could care less. That brings me to something else about me. I generally don’t care.

Memories are like the spotless thoughts that cannot bear to travel through your mind again because of the muck….

I threw my head back and I could see the swirling shapes come again….like some supersonic game of Venus rings…concentric circles that refused to slow down…and then the circles gave way to a wisp of smoke that played with my senses….It had the fragrance of wet earth…the one which I loved breathing in and growing around….the soft mud that held those chubby feet and lovingly etched footprints to mark existence…
“Passengers boarding AI 987 to Cochin please assemble at gate no. 4.”

How typical, I thought. A trip down memory lane and your thoughts get interrupted by a ground staff’s automated voice. After what seemed like hours, I sensed Kerala…. the effervescent Pookalam (floral carpet) that greeted me at the airport was the first sign. I frowned. It was Thiruonam.and I didn’t even know it was September. Disconnect when deliberately made sometimes snatches away large morsels of time from your hands.

I bend to feel an array of vaadamulla flowers (bright purple flowers that are used to decorate the floral carpet during the Onam festival.). I stood up as a rivulet of goosebumps appeared on my arm. Nostalgia was making an appearance like never before.

“Vegam…Vegam”(Hurry, Hurry) Gayathri chechi would urge us little ones as the first ray of dawn hit the horizon. Sleepily, we would hurry pulling the petals off the huge pile of flowers by our side.” And no leaves, mind you!” she would chide in between. I was always given the vaadamulla pile as its tiny head called for tiny chubby hands. Even as I got busy amma would push a ball of rich curry enticed ball of rice into my mouth much to my distaste.

A bearded old man in a shabby “once-upon-a-time” white uniform and a peaked cap that threatened to fall off any minute appeared from nowhere and held an ironically impeccable white placard that screamed “MISS INDU”. I looked at the holder of the placard and smiled warmly. On perfect cue, he rushed over and hustled my baggage away to a waiting car.

I knew that the journey would add on to my list of haunting melodies even before I started it. I was not wrong. I couldn’t be. As I stepped out, a nauseous wave of agony hit me through the fragrance that enveloped me.

Often stopping to appreciate décor whenever I checked into hotel rooms, it never struck me to glance around. Neither did jetlag. I packed my backpack, had a bite and was about to step outside when I met the driver again at the door.

I stopped to smile then instinctively realised he was waiting for me.

I threw him a puzzled look. He walked over, looked at me closely, “Madam, I have met many people who come back to see their village and their place. They have many emotions but yours are the saddest eyes I have ever seen.”

I barely smiled and nodded.

The noise of a weather beaten auto rickshaw,scissored through our conversation and turned to stop by my side. A young thing that barely had stubbles asked me where I wanted to go.

I stopped in front of my “tharavaadu”, (mansion) its majesty calling out to me from a distance…its ornate roof never known to bend before anyone…just like Achen.

“Kolethey kuttiya?” (Are you the daughter of the house?”) queried the rickshaw driver curiously standing at an odd angle with his mundu stuck somewhere between his legs.

I nodded nonchalantly trying to fish out money from my purse.

“No…I don’t want your money. I have heard that your birth is a cursed one. I have just brought my vehicle. Sorry.” He narrowed his eyes, gave me one last look and turned his vehicle off down the road while my frozen look disappeared with him .

“Ammmmmmmmaaaaa…” the cherubic girl shouts and twirls around in her green and maroon bordered pattu paavada, all of 6 years and wet with delight as her silver anklets joyfully chime to the feel of water and to her imaginary dance steps…Wait till Amma sees that she can shout and go around in circles as well….

A young lady’s voice rings out from the insides of a palatial “Tharavaadu”…. the beckoningly orange brick roof that over the years has disciplined the virgin rain to run down it’s inviting troughs and curves before obediently diving into the bubbling water and the gamut of pebbles below. The lady soon comes into view beside one of the huge white pillars of the house…. her wet hair loosely tied into a knot…. the end of her black margined mundu and veshti tucked at her waist taut enough to give a peep of her slim fair waistline….

“Indutttyyy…” the young woman steps out into the rain and calls out for her daughter as she loosens the end from her waist and covers her head in a mock attempt to keep the rains away…She finds her 6 year old beside a bend coconut tree dancing to some imaginary tune…It is only a moment’s displeasure that she can show, before she also joins her daughter and the rain in their very special world….”You are my blessing” are the last words she whispers into her daughter’s ears…

No, Amma…. your daughter is a curse. I murmured my voice choked for words.

And then it rained.

That’s when I stopped short for words.

I sat on the wet ground and grabbed a handful of mud and made a sloppy pancake…not perfect oval ones like Amma’s soft hands would make…

“Promise me that you’ll always come back to me wherever you go.” she would whisper holding a muddy hand before me….”

“Promisssseee Ammmaaa…” I would slap both my chubby hands into her hand and yell back in glee.

My manappam stayed long enough for me to catch a waft of the fresh earth before the rain let it slide gently from my fingers leaving just a shade of muddy brown.

All of a sudden like the afternoon burst, my emotions gave way and I felt icicles from my memory prick me and bleed me all over….

And then I cried. Loudly…louder than the rain god….louder than the fate which took the 6 year old’s parents away…louder than the drone of the drugs that swam in my stomach….louder than the silent hatred and sarcasm that raised the girl into the woman…louder than the pain of my existence….louder than me….

“Am back amma….I have kept my promise amma…” I shouted as I thrust my face into the muddy spread, which gave way to shout my sorrow, but embraced me close enough for me to hear the song that can come only from a mother’s lips….

And I saw the little girl run indoors straight into her amma’s arms… sucking a sliver of dry tamarind slyly between her lips and her head buried in the fragrant bosom…

I was home…and amma waited for me….

I had a haircut

I had a haircut.

Now I can imagine the mundanity you attach with that statement, And for those who bother to read further on you may have a nasal snort of “Oh-its-the bad haircut story-again” already made because it’s only about bad haircuts that one tends to write about. Nobody’s haircut story ever written starts with “ I had an excellent haircut”, for excellence is seen and admired and re-cut again.

But the ones written about are the ones who have literally lost hair over lost hair!!!

I have always been a victim to the ways of the inexperienced. Does that make me experienced? Never! For the impulsive Sagittarian hates the word “experience”. It makes her feel old and predictable….

And now the experienced scissor tale of inexperience begins….

BEFORE:

Luscious long black hair upto my waist…. I stood as a symbolic modern representation to all that’s good and true about Kerala…including the heart-stopping plait that can sway only to the tunes of shapely hips and the sickle curve of a strand of hair that can only hide behind a well-shaped ear lobe….

AFTER:

Small naughty curls bouncing in all possible directions…I stood as a symbolic representation of all that was Greek and true about Medusa and her head…including the heart wrenching tad of a strand of hair that notoriously hugged my forehead and the riot of curls that rode over the rest of what was once my head.

IN BETWEEN:

“Mmm…no not the Beckham one…Vic or Dav.” I mumbled as I leafed through page after page of what seemed like an endless book of “The latest” in haircuts or the lack of them. Beyond those series of photos and beneath the head that hardly swallowed them in, there lay a nagging disturbing thought; the kind that doesn’t appreciate new things always.

I was in a new city and I detested the prospect of surrendering my crown and money to somebody who couldn’t make out the difference between either but when you have an important meeting to attend the next day and the ends of your hair look more frayed than your nerves...desperation and impulsiveness become siblings.

Considerations conceived promises, became pregnant as trials and gave birth to a heady argument. After a mutual questioning of basics in profession and ethics, I stormed out distraught and certainly visibly dishevelled.

NEXT DAY:
“First day at work” was no better what with colleagues giving shocked looks from slivers in the cubicles. The silence was unbearable. I finally pushed my desk away and yelled, “Did somebody press the MUTE button in here.”
Trrrring.Boss.

“First you come in looking like something the cat dragged in last night and then you scream the roof down, who the hell do you think are lady?” was what I expected.

What I got:
“Now, now Indu…I know the last week has been real trying for you what with you single-handedly leading the project. But no amount of stress should make a man inflict bodily harm on himself.”

Poised liquidy convincing eyes looked at eyes wide open with mouth to match,

“Boss, are you trying to say that I PULLED out my hair b’cos of the stress?”

“Well, dear,um…er…not in so many words but …er…” Boss places his “Best Entrepreneur Award” plaque before him and slinks somewhere behind it.

For the second time that year…. I stormed out!

TODAY:

Weeks later, here I am pasted by sticky gel and cornered by bob pins. Not to mention smothered by sympathetic looks and feeling like something out of a recycle bin with all the helpful suggestions pouring in…Nobody dare disturb as they see me hurriedly thumping at my keyboard with an urgency like never before….

“I had a hair cut.”