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 I don’t know why guys have this impression that women enjoy trips to the salon. Of course, we enjoy facials and haircuts, but we visit the salon for more unexciting work like eyebrows shaping, waxing, etc. There’s only one word to describe the experience – “Ouch”. Have you guys ever ripped off a band-aid from your (hairy) skin? Does it seem pleasant? Now imagine 100,000 such band-aids being ripped off every patch of your skin possible. Add to that the sticky feeling which makes you feel like a chewing gum long after the waxing has happened. Now you know how messy a poor chewing gum feels. Back to my waxing appointment, I lay comfortably trying to practice mindfulness while the salon lady mercilessly waxed on. It was a rhythmic meditation – Deep breath in , wax being applied , deep breath out, rip (holy shit), with my eyes popping out like a cartoon character. Of course ,being a disciplined lady, I held back on the (curse) words and focussed on my breath which now seemed more like a dragon’s . Wow, imagine a dragon which feels like a chewing gum and which practices mindfulness. That was not the worst part. The worst part happened when another beautician came in to stare at me getting tortured. She just stood there staring at my legs while giggling with the other lady. Nobody makes fun of my thighs but me.

I pretended to sleep. The other lady who had now stared at each micro inch of my thighs now decided she wanted to have more fun with me. She pulled out a strip and ripppp. My arms were now the subject of her entertainment. Now the breathing rhythm had changed. Breathe in- Ouch( legs being waxed) , breathe out – Ouch( arms being waxed). Time had stopped. This was the end of the world. The only fact that made me realise that I was alive was the fact that I had heard that there is no physical body after death. And if there was no physical body, how would there be physical pain? Duh! It is like ordering ice lemon tea without tea! My mind decided the torture wasn’t enough. It reminded me of a waxing epic which had happened a few years back. I call it epic because stuff like this happens once in a gazillion years. I walked into a salon and mentioned to the owner that I wanted to get waxed for a wedding. I casually mentioned that I was in a hurry. Those words would form the top of my regret list when I would die. Four women (or rather women wrestlers), splattered me across the flat-bed. I felt like a spider which was stuck on to a wall. Or rather a mosquito which got hit by a newspaper. Rip,rip, rip, rip went the strips. Before I could say “Ouch” , another strip was being pulled out. In order to avoid trouble of saying” ouch” really fast I decided to pick only the “O” and howled ” O.-O… O…O”. Within a few minutes, I felt like I was a wolf singing out loud on a full moon night. Within minutes, the job was done. It seemed like hours. I made a mental note to never ever say at a salon that I was in a hurry. But the good part about the whole deal was that my throat cleared up and I realised that I could sing pretty well- at least well enough to not chase off 4 women who were mercilessly trying to attack me.

P.S This post is not for ladies who have endured the pain of childbirth. They can just brush off the entire post and say ‘Meh’.

We went for IIT-Kharagpur(KGP) spring fest in our second year of engineering. This decision was taken after no introspection. It was just one of those things for me, where I knew that spending five days in the campus of a college that I didn’t make through, would do me some good. Maybe breathing in the KGP air would endow me with some more IQ points using which I would be able to top my class in the college that was kind enough to give me admission. Fat dreams.

So a bunch of us(equivalent to the number of people you would fit into a mini bus), headed towards IIT. The train ride was pregnant with an air of excitement and anticipation. We would be in a free place for the next five days. Having stayed in a hostel with heavy rules, it felt pretty good. We reached the IIT campus late in the evening and headed to the dormitories, the place meant for us to shiver through the night, thanks to the KGP winters.

We slept pretty late at night owing to the noisy college girls from another city(not to be named), who found it imperatively crucial to discuss clothes and makeup at the top of their voices at 2 a.m. It felt as if they had a secret bet on who could shatter the glass windows first. Thankfully the glass windows had probably weathered such specimen in the past as well and were pretty robust. We woke up next morning with enthusiasm and sore throats.

But this was no time for us to sit and lament over our throats and talk about the burdens of life. We had to get ready. The college guys were waiting for us for breakfast. Now we are no queens and we didn’t have an elaborate makeup, hair and clothes train routine for us to cater to. Food motivated us to get ready in a few minutes . We headed out. The campus stood out in all its splendor and freshness. IIT has a pollution free campus and you can use your leg joints, bicycles and rickshaws to get to different places. We decided to lubricate our leg joints. We were informed by the guys that there were tiny breakfast joints right outside the campus. The cold wind hit against our faces and increased our anticipation of the hot coffee that we would find outside.

We had breakfast comprising of hot idlis, sambar and coffee at Rs 10(or a similar amount). We were thrilled at how inexpensive the place was, considering that we were students and we loved a cheap bargain. God knows what we would do with the saved up amount, but it came in handy if we had to fill in fines of some kind in our college, which we eventually ended up doing more frequently than you might imagine.

We stepped back into the college campus wondering where to head next. We decided to walk around to the area that we had alighted the previous night after we had been picked up from the train station. There was loud music playing. Curious we headed over to the area where the main fest celebrations would be. There was a huge open area, enclosed by tents(food, games, dating booths…etc). Few people were dancing in front of a stage. Dancing in broad daylight on a dance floor was a concept that I was not familiar with till then. After the IIT trip, all these tiny, irrelevant and useless inhibitions were shaken off. The gender ratio was extremely skewed in IIT, we realised. We were told that there were 600 guys and 6 girls. I don’t personally vouch for the numbers, but me and my friends did feel like queens given such sparse female population. Guess you don’t need a clothes train, a crown and an elaborate makeup routine after all, to feel like a queen.

There were chants of ‘KGP ka tempo high hai’ happening all over without any prior warnings. We also decided to create a ‘K…I…T…S….Dhishkiyon’ in order to keep pace. Just because we couldn’t make it through the IIT exam didn’t mean that we couldn’t create funky slogans. The ‘dhishkiyon(sound of a gun shot)’ had to be done with our fingers shaped like guns and pointed towards the sky. Pretty stylish, eh?

I will reiterate that one of the most liberating things was that we were on a different campus. The reason I am doing this is to justify in advance the series of incidents we found ourselves in next. The girls hostel entry time was 2 a.m, if my memory cells are on track. Boys were scot free as usual with no entry timings. Deep breaths. We decided to play rebels that day. Some of us wanted a bonfire and a night out. The chances of getting caught were slim, given that there was no one closely monitoring our entry into the hostel and we were not such VIPs that we would have wanted to imagine. Our only goof up was that given the IIT campus was quite large, we didn’t realise that we had set up camp right behind the girls hostel. Yep, the girls talking (screaming?)about hair and makeup were maybe around a hundred meters from us. Shudder. But, we didn’t know all these facts then. We laughed, admired the fire and felt free. There were rounds of Antaskshari that happened. But then…..he came.

He who was not to be named…since we didn’t know his name in the first place. This specimen, who you might have guessed was a man(and probably still is), came on a bicycle. At first we brushed aside his presence in the shadows as just another passerby, someone who would just stare at us, judge us and cycle away. But no. He came towards us. Do you realise how unnerving it is to have a stranger cycle towards you at midnight in an area where there are more trees than buildings and there is a foggy undertone to the environment? He reminds me of Boman Irani in 3 Idiots when I think about him now. Actually, I have forgotten his face and now I can only remember Boman Irani’s face. So I will name this character Boman.

Boman got down from his cycle and put on his cycle stand(irrelevant I know). He had worn gloves and had a gray sweater on, obviously with a shirt underneath. We all stood up and stared at him. He was unabashed by the presence of a bunch of overenthusiastic, hoarse voiced people who were creating a ruckus a few seconds back. He went around shaking hands with everyone, mumbling – ‘Shake hands with me. I am the President of India.’ We complied. So far we had considered only two options as to the issue with this gentleman – 1. He was loony OR 2. He was drunk. We figured he would leave us alone and scurry off after he introduced his Highness. One of the girls in our group was next in line to shake hands with Boman. She extended her hand and as she shook hands with him, she started screaming. Now, when someone starts screaming in a blood curdling fashion, you follow suit. You don’t draw up a Powerpoint presentation with a detailed analysis of why this person is screaming.

She shouted ‘He is a ghost.’ Our faces lost all colour. The man indeed scurried off, probably to get his head or eardrums examined. But she was hysterical by now.

We shouted ‘What?!?’

‘He has no fingers’ – she screamed.

At that moment, we could have realised that it is possible for a man who looks like Boman Irani and who walks around pretending to be President at 4 in the morning, to have lost his fingers in an accident or something. But being scared at that time was better than proving our valour(and foolishness) by sitting there lest he should come back. We got up and started walking towards the hostel. It was during this time we realised that we were almost sitting on the fence of the girls hostel. We decided we would say we had gone for an early morning walk. God knows who wears such clothes and earrings to an early morning walk. As we entered the hostel, we saw a lady whose face turned into the colour of a sleepy beetroot as soon as she saw us.

One thing I know is that if you say anything with confidence, the other person buys it. But this beetroot was no ordinary person. We tried our flimsy morning walk excuse. She screamed like a banshee on her period. After she cooled down, she said ‘You will have to attend a DISCO tomorrow.’

We were thrilled for a few innocuous moments where we actually mistook DISCO to be a place where people danced and wore sexy clothes. I imagined people in IITs didn’t like going to discos, maybe because they were intelligent and reasoned a disco to be a place where ordinary commoners with not as high IQs as them, wasted their precious time on frivolous things like dancing. We smiled a little.

‘Disco?’ one of us endowed with nerves of steel dared to ask.

‘DISCO. DISciplinary COmmittee meeting’ she said.

Why would they do this to us – raise our hopes and then prick them with an acronym which hurt the depths of our already harrowed souls?

We hardly slept that night. The makeup girls had already slept off or maybe passed out from sheer exhaustion from their previous night’s conversation. We looked at each other with hopelessness and fear. We were afraid that this incident might be reported to our own college and we would have to pay dearly for it. Although the 10 Rs breakfast had ensured that we had plenty of financial cushioning for fines, the sin committed by us was so huge that the paying dearly would be in the form of a non monetary punishment.

The DISCO started the next morning with authority figures staring at us with disdain. I figured they would have thoughts aplenty of what this generation had come to – enjoying their birthright of freedom and everything.

One of us narrated what happened the previous night with the glove man. Their expressions turned from disdain to one of defensiveness in a matter of seconds. They assured us of our safety and swore that IIT campuses were safe and we should not make a big deal out of this outside.

We nodded and left the room. For the first time in my life, I felt a sense of relief exiting a DISCO. More on this trip to follow, once I am able to put together my incoherent thoughts into a readable format. 🙂

So, I start going for a few dance classes at my gym. I want to believe that I am a decent dancer, so I avoid looking at the mirror(which is on my right). Ignorance is bliss. Delusion is Heaven(don’t buy into this. I am just getting carried away).

I go for a Zumba class. This lady who is in flawless shape puts on the music and starts instructing us. We allow ourselves to be instructed, thus maintaining the decorum of the class. There is no mention of any kind of fish market from her, so I assume she is happy with us, although the music is so loud that I forsee fish market people saying ‘What is this? A Zumba class?’ sometime in the future.

She dances really well and we try to follow her. Then she adds in her instructions ‘Be sexy. Like a tigress.’ Now I have been a human being all my life, so I try hard to ape her. I can see that everyone else is also trying hard. You can tell when one is trying hard when they have strained expressions(inside the bathroom or outside).

She shouts ‘Sexy tigress.’ We take it that we are doing well. Pardon me as I decide to speak for the whole class. She gets flustered and shouts ‘tigress’ once again. I am trying hard to coordinate my left foot, right arm, left eyeball and my ponytail while still trying to feel and look like a tigress. A tigress with love handles.
I don’t think that a tigress can do all this shit at once, while trying to look like a human being.

Then she exclaims ‘Tigress. Not Hello Kitty.’

So much for the sexy moves. Come to think of it, I always liked fluffy cats like Garfield better than some tigress who multitasks.

Image Credits: Unknown.

#dance #garfield #funny #ilovedance

This story dates back about two decades. I owned a bicycle back then. Monotony didn’t feature in my dictionary back then. I loved riding the bike on the road in front of our house, back and forth, with no agenda to reach anywhere whatsoever. I loved the feel of the wind against my face, the quiet neighbourhood, the street dogs who would sometimes run behind the bike and the endorphins(although at that time I didn’t know about endorphins).

There was only one problem that interfered with this hobby of mine. A friend of mine used to pop by expectedly every day and snatch the bike from me. Well, I had been taught to share, so I managed to stuff my possessiveness of the bike and the aforementioned endorphins within me. That is what good girls did. And so, I didn’t say much during the first few days. After, he started taking my trying-to-be-good nature for granted, I had to do something. My kiddy brain gave me one piece of advice – to hide the keys. I don’t know who I was hiding them from, since he never came into my room to grab the keys. But, I wanted it out of sight, so that I could tell him that I could not find my bike keys. At that time, the guilt of lying was much lesser than the pain of being giving due to a lack of choice. My friend came, I told him that I had lost the bicycle keys(with much tsking to validate the point). Guess Bollywood resides in each one of us in the way we dramatise things. He went off, probably to find other people’s honesty that he could mess around with.

I relaxed that day, doing things that kids do. The next evening, I decided to sneak out my bicycle to go somewhere new, somewhere I would not bump run into this friend. To my utmost horror, I could not remember where I had hidden the keys. It was one of those duh moments, which I can never forget, as if the memory cells in my mind which had the information on where these keys were, had been sucked in by the Bermuda Triangle or something. I searched everywhere possible for the next few days. It was the dumbest thing to happen to me(and anyone I knew). I was the laughing stock for my family for the next few days. Ultimately, the lock had to be broken, when the keys were declared missing permanently by me. The next day onwards, I had to share my bicycle with him again, this time with a feeling of guilt and stupidity tugging at my heart.

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We have an amazing habit of linking things up. Right now, as I hear the thunder outside, I am reminded of tea which goes fabulously with rains. And tea always reminds me of the tiny kulhad tea that gets served in trains – The comforting sound of the train on the tracks, the voices of people talking (sometimes a bit too loudly, managing to disrupt the art of hiding behind a book to avoid the people sitting in front staring awkwardly at you, due to the sheer berth arrangement which makes people want to talk to each other) and the sounds of vendors selling tea, bhel and other items which somehow taste better on trains.

This incident goes back to my college days, back when we proclaimed ourselves to be cool. In an attempt to live by the code of coolness, we had to do certain things like not care about reserving our seats and behave indignantly when asked for tickets by the ticket checker. On one such fine day, we decided to buy a general ticket for our travel back home. It was an overnight journey and we thought we would just pay the difference and get a reserved seat, just like we always did.

That day was different. Firstly, the train was jam packed with smart alecs like us, who were also in the race to be proclaimed cool. Secondly, the ticket checker was ……well, I will let you form a judgement on him. We sat on seats hand-picked by us and went gabbing about things of paramount importance – who said what to whom in college….and why….and when….after which we went on to the debate of who was right. Within this time, the bond guy,  as we shall refer to the ticket checker, made his way to our kingdom.

The conversation after this went like this:

‘Uncle, can you upgrade our seats?’ my friend said.

Silence…. Bond Guy looked perturbed after which a wave of anger crossed his face. Yep, it was definitely anger, what with all the clenching(of the jaw, silly) and furrowed eyebrows.

‘Uncle?’ he gasped.

My friend giggled. Unfortunately, Bond Guy took more offence. This time he almost spat his response. Swach Bharat, anyone?

‘If I wore Nike shoes and spiked my hair, you would not be calling me uncle,’ he said.

We looked at each other in dismay. This uncle was our only support in the train, the only one who would redeem us of our general class tickets and give us reserved berths, where we would continue our who said what to whom and when game. But he adopted an air of huffiness. We could have buttered him on his looks, but it would mean lying through our teeth(and dentures, if anyone was secretly wearing them). We could have said sorry, but cool people don’t do that, according to the the ‘Worldwide Guide of Being Cool Handbook.’ I just made that handbook name up. Hope you didn’t waste your time searching for it online. I give classes on how to fake coolness, by the way. Wink.

Anyhow, the matter had slipped out of our hands, as we stared at Bond Guy, who stood there devoid of his Nike shoes.

‘Go to the general compartment,’ he ordered, pointing his index(not middle) finger in a particular direction.

Since we were part time rebels as well,  we walked in the opposite direction.

‘Hey, the general compartment is this side,’ he reminded us, although not too loudly, because by now the snorers had taken over the compartment.

We started running as fast as we could. He did not run after us…because of his Nike shoes dilemma. Now, because our semester exams had just gotten over, our college mates were spread throughout the train – some who would help us and some who….well , would show us the middle finger, because few things about us rubbed them the wrong way. Actually, all things about us. One of the people from the 1st category(the ones who would help us) was fortunate and well planned enough to be travelling in A.C 2nd tier. AC 2nd tier in India is the compartment in Indian trains, where curtains are used to provide privacy to passengers. As I ran through the 2nd AC compartment, I got pulled into a side lower berth by that well meaning 1st category person.

He hissed in a voice that only villains would take the risk of hissing in.

‘Chup jaa pagal. Warna T.C(Ticket Checker) pakad lega,’ he said. Heaven knows how he found out about the Nike dilemma. My legs were hanging from below the curtains. If there is one thing I know, it is to not get comfortable around any sort of hissing noises. No exceptions. I fled out of there. Meanwhile, my friend came running towards me.

‘You know what happened?’ she said.

‘What?’ I said.

‘This classmate (let’s name him Delusional Dude for reasons that are best undisclosed) whipped out his hand across the aisle out of nowhere,’ she said.

‘And?’ I said.

‘And he had a balm in his hand. He said “Ye lo…Balm lagao” ‘ she said.

‘What? Why?’ I said.

‘I don’t know. I shrieked,’ she said.

For those who don’t know, shrieking is considered a valid…almost expected response in these situations. If you don’t scream, perhaps you are as loony as him.

‘The worst part is he was probably asleep,’ she said.

Oh, the drama of the subconscious mind reveals itself just when you think you have concealed ‘that part of you‘ which no one should ever see.

We kept running until finally we found a bunch of seniors who were travelling in the same train. They were kind enough to provide us with ample inches for our bums to settle in.

Years later, I travelled in a train after Mr. Laloo had ended his reign as the railway minister of India. At that point I was not concerned much about the state of the railways, et al. To me, at a micro level, all that mattered was that I got to my destination without having to witness a guy….umm…how do I put this delicately….well, without having to witness a guy pleasing himself rather apparently under a thin bed sheet, on a berth that was right next to mine.

So, I settled into my side lower berth with rather low expectations and high excitement due to not having to share small talk with people staring at me. When I was about to fall asleep, my subconscious mind woke me up, perhaps sensing some danger. What I witnessed next was the fury of three cockroaches, rubbing their legs(?), arms(?) together on the train wall, while staring at me with eyes that were well bigger than ordinary cockroach eyes. I panicked and slid out of the berth, like a snake, albeit a terrified one. The trio didn’t budge, displaying their confidence and authority over a compartment that they probably considered their own. I begged someone to let me sleep in an empty berth next to theirs. But all night, I kept staring at the train wall, hoping that the trio didn’t follow me there.

Image credits: Unknown

Before I come to the actual story , let me give you a bit of background. Years ago, I was travelling in a cab at night in Mumbai. One doesn’t hesitate to travel at 11:45 pm in Mumbai, owing to its title of being a safe city. I hopped into the cab, a Maruti Van, incidentally the image of which has been marred by multiple movies as a kidnapping/rape vehicle. Thankfully, things went peacefully, as the car cruised along the Lower Parel to Bandra back road. Now, I am a suspicious person in general. I am sure I must have been a sniffer dog or something similar in one of my previous births. I noticed that in the middle of the cruise-y drive we were on, the driver put on his ear cords. Nothing suspicious about this if you really ponder hard with strained face muscles after the incident happens, but at 11:45 in the night everything(and everyone) looks suspicious. I was seated right behind the driver and I decided to keep an eye on him.

Approximately 5 minutes and 30 seconds later after the ear cord putting action, I looked into the rear-view mirror after having completed the pressing task of making sure I had read all the latest status updates by my friends and groaned after the battery ran out.

The driver was fast asleep! And that was not the worst part. The worst part was that the car was running on happily, as if nothing had happened, at speed 70 kmph or so.

I tapped the driver’s shoulder, a thing I normally avoid doing because I am a stickler for people’s privacy and if someone taps on my shoulder, I jump out of my skin which I deem as an appropriate response to the aforementioned act of invading my privacy and tapping on my shoulder. The driver thankfully just gasped loudly and realised that he had dozed off. We were near Mahim, a place which I would prefer to search-for-a-cab-because-my-driver-is-like-Garfield only during the daytime due to its close proximity to Dharavi, one of the most crime infested places in Mumbai. But I had to make the choice. A sleepy driver made the entire city unsafe for me. Even if he dozed off in front of a police station, I would no longer be alive to write this blog. So, I got down after doing some vague probability calculations. My phone was also peacefully asleep by now and there was no one on the road, except a few street dogs. Thankfully, a cab arrived, after what seemed like thousand years. The cabbie demanded Rs. 200 for going to Bandra, which if I ran at that time of the night, I would reach in 15 minutes tops. I took the cab and sighed loudly, as is customary to do so when one has undergone through such trauma. I reached Bandra safely and vowed to the following.

a. Never doze off in a cab when I am the only passenger in it.

b. Stare into the rear-view mirror from the back-seat to the point that the driver gets scared.

Cut to 2015 I found a new option to ensure that drivers don’t doze off anywhere they fancied.

2015: We were driving to Surabaya from Yogyakarta. We had left Yogykarta after sunset and we were well into the night. As the night progressed, everyone started dozing off, including me. I realised that point ‘a’ of the vows I had made approximately 5 years ago was getting violated. So I stared into the rear-view mirror. But the driver had eyelids which covered most of the eye area, even when his eyes were open. *Physics and maths always sneak into one’s life unannounced, don’t they*. I kept staring and he was impervious to the rudeness which I was exhibiting. The car kept moving at a steady pace.

Earlier on the trip we had talked about how the area between Surabaya and Yogyakarta was infested with ghosts and snakes. But the combination of the two had scared me the most – ghost snakes. What if there were ghosts of snakes in our vehicle? Also, there had been mysterious cloud type formations in front of our car the moment we talked about ghosts and they mysteriously disappeared once we got appropriately scared.

Anyhow, back to the driver and my self proclaimed role of a passenger-who-would-not-let-drivers-doze-off. I had figured out by now that it was impossible for me to understand if he was asleep or awake using the power of my eyes. I had to do more. I asked my friend who was fast asleep on the front passenger seat to take my place and I took my throne on the front seat. Ironical how it becomes a throne when you do something important on it, like saving people’s lives. Friends who were in the car – you can thank me by buying me coffee ;).

Once I sat on my throne, I felt in control. But things had to be done. I examined his full face, feeling like a moronic robot while doing so. He looked weary. I suddenly remembered people’s love for Bollywood in Indonesia. I had a bucket-load of Bollywood item songs. I know it reflects poorly on my taste of songs and one ‘should’ listen to more soulful songs, but jarring sounds coupled with questionable lyrics wake me up best in the morning and hence the item songs on my tablet. I started playing one after the other in a loud volume.

The driver started grinning from ear to ear. He also pressed the accelerator and brake with more alertness and enthusiasm, I noticed. I was bushed, but there was no way I could stop mixing the songs. All was well. We reached Surabaya safely and I realised how exhausting it would be for someone to be a taxi DJ, if such a profession ever took shape.

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I sat in the salon, staring at the decor. It is what I do when I am made to sit anywhere without further instructions. I looked at the mirror a couple of times but then decided that too much of staring at oneself in the mirror presents itself with the label of being narcissist. I didn’t want to be like the guy who stared at himself in the water all day. If I did that, who would stare at Facebook feeds all day? Anyhow, I felt good that I was well stocked. I had a couple of books not so neatly kept in my bag. I had eaten well. I had a bottle of water waiting to be drunk.

I get a little paranoid about how to spend time during salon trips, travels and so on. Being a person whose mind wanders without permission, there needs to be a backup plan all the time. Having something to do always makes me feel comfortable. At least my mind would wander only to the contents of the book, which I think is fairly acceptable in the psychological, philosophical and spiritual world.

Before we delve into what happened at the salon, let us talk about my latest book choices. You see, ever since I have decided to keep away from my know-it-all-titis, at least till I grow into that tone more in real life, I have started reading stuff for pure entertainment without a deeper meaning. That has been puzzling to me on many levels, having spent a good part of the last 2 years looking for meaning behind everything including correlating the colour of the birds I saw to a particular spiritual meaning. Yep!

So, when I went to the library to explore the fiction side of the world, I was lost. I was sure I didn’t want to pick up heavy or gory stuff or anything which would keep me up at night. That left me with humour. Even within that, there was humour that I understood and that which I didn’t understand, purely because of the regional parlance and not because I was reading it upside down. That left me with a few guy-lit(?) novels. Two of them made their way into the aforementioned bag.

As I sat in the salon, after having discussed my preferred hairstyle with the hairstylist, who then proceeded to make some snide remarks about how I had not maintained my hair properly and how some of the (coincidentally)overpriced products would do magic to my hair, I pulled out one of the novels. It was about a guy who was having a quarter(+5 years) life crisis. I assumed from his healthy habits that he could expect to live to be a 100, if he quit the binge drinking which his quarter(+5 years) life crisis burdened him with. The novel was light and breezy. After my haircut, the salon guy started applying colour. I wanted to try out global hair colour and not streaks. I remember that I was feeling particularly bold that day. The salon guy, who himself was quite bold, going by his choice of hair colours(there were atleast 3 different shades on his head), assured me that I had made the right choice, and then said something which sounded like techspeak on hair colour and texture which I could not understand and didn’t care to question him more on. Our time is limited on Earth, eh.

Shampoos followed by hair colour application happened, along with small talk which usually and painfully accompanies these situations. Silence is probably so unbearable to us that we are forced to talk to people whom we spend even five minutes with. With me, silence is not much of an issue because my head keeps babbling. Oh did I tell you that I started meditating and ever since the salon trip, my head is reasonably devoid of thoughts? Maybe it has something to do with the hair colour entering my brain as well. Hmm.

After 45 minutes of the colour application, the salon guy checked my hair and confirmed that I was now officially coloured. I hopped onto the big chair and let my hair be shampooed intermittently asking him if the hair colour looked good. I hate information asymmetry. For those few seconds, it felt that the entire decision of whether the hair looked good or not lay in his hands.

He replied in a rather raspy tone.

“Yes it looks good.”

After the shampoo, I was led to my seat. I stared at the mirror, forgetting the whole narcissist theory. My phone was switched off anyway and there was no Facebook feed to stare at. He started drying the hair. I blinked a couple of times. He blinked too. I know we all blink, but these blinks were in quick succession and my life history reminds me that is never a good thing to blink in quick succession.

“Err. Is the colour the same as the catalog?” I said.

“I don’t know.” he said, now peeking into the depths of my hair, as if he was going to pick up one strand and say ‘Eureka. I found the coloured strand of hair’, whilst trotting around the salon wearing the 3 shades of colour in his hair.

“You know I am not going to pay for my hair colour to change from black to black.” I say, holding onto the novel, as if that was the only thing in my life I could control right now.

“I swear this has never happened.” he said.

A lioness inside me dharo-ed roop(came into form). I normally don’t like to say unpleasant things, but I had to.

“Well, what do you suggest?” I said.

“We can try another colour.” he said.

“What if that doesn’t catch colour? You know my hair is now full of chemicals and still the same colour.” I said, remembering his previously detailed out thoughts about my split ends, et al.

“I promise it will.” he said, his voice even raspier than before.

“Ok. But I won’t pay any money if the colour doesn’t come on.” I said.

“Yes.” he said, as if it was my fault.

“Has this ever happened to you before?” he said.

“No.” I said, returning to the novel.

Reading about the confusion in the guy facing the quarter(+ 5 years) life crisis made me feel slightly ok. In my head, I was doing some math on how much I would pay him if the hair colour didn’t catch on this time also. I should pay something, I thought. I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t hear the stuff he said about him having used 4 tubes of colour on my hair and only 1 tube on others.

I tried looking for a deeper meaning within this too. Maybe hair colour was not meant to be for me, because it would make me look like a scarecrow like it did the previous time. But, my doubts were wiped off when the hair colour came out good and the quarter(+5 years) life crisis guy decided that his life did not have much of a crisis anyway.

Now, my husband swears that my hair colour grows bolder every time I sit in the sunlight, which is something that I do every day. He says it with an air of helplessness. I take it as a compliment.

Fun Fact: While writing this post, I spelt ‘dilemma’ as ‘dilemna’ as I have for centuries(counting all my past lives). I swear that I remember ‘dilemna’ being the right spelling. I found this post which might be an interesting read on the dilemm(n?)a of dillemma.

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