Don't Let Him Know (9 page)

‘Oh, you can call home, can’t you?’ Romola turned to Avinash and said, ‘Ask him to stay, why don’t you? After all, he is your long-lost friend.’

But Avinash did not say anything.

The two men went down in silence. As Sumit walked down the street he glanced up. Avinash was still standing at the door. Romola was still standing on the roof, holding Amit close to her, watching him leave. A southern evening breeze was picking up, ruffling her hair. He could smell rain in the air.

He raised his hand in goodbye. Amit waved energetically. Romola just watched him, her hand resting on the little boy’s shoulder.

IV

The Discipline of Haircuts

Avinash hated haircut Sundays with a passion. When he was a little boy, Nripati-babu, the ancient neighbourhood barber, would come to the house on the last Sunday of the month carrying his beat-up black box with a set of scissors, a strop razor and a discoloured powder puff that had once been blue and was now mottled. Without fail, on haircut Sundays Avinash would throw a tantrum but to no avail. He would be deposited on a rickety stool in the courtyard, his face dark with mutiny. His mother would yank a newspaper down over him and his head would pop out like a jack-in-the-box. Nripati-babu would adjust the newspaper to his satisfaction, wipe the scissors on his old white shirt and then, without a word, start chopping. Avinash would stare at the thickets of grey hair growing out of Nripati-babu’s ears and see his own black hair tumbling down over the black newsprint as if the letters themselves were being uprooted. Sometimes he would look up and see his friend Indrani, from the house next door, peeking at him through their kitchen window. When that happened his humiliation would be complete.

‘Why, why, why must I get my hair cut? You don’t,’ Avinash once said accusingly to his mother.

‘You are a boy and boys have short hair.’

‘Why?’

‘Because boys are one way and girls are another. And if you have long hair people will think you are a girl.’

‘So what?’

‘Well, then you don’t need to study at St John’s School for Boys. Look, I have a hundred things to do. I can’t sit here and argue with you all day. If you don’t want a haircut, don’t. We will put a ribbon in it and enrol you in St Teresa’s like Indrani next door.’

When Avinash turned seven his exasperated mother announced he was old enough to go and get his hair cut, just as his father did, at the New Modern Saloon for Gents (Air-Conditioned). She thought it would make him feel grown-up and that his passionate hatred for the ritual might dissipate. But it did not help. The New Modern Saloon was neither new nor modern but it was indeed air-conditioned. In fact, before B.C. Sen and Sons Fine Jewellers installed an air conditioner, New Modern Saloon was the only shop in the neighbourhood that boasted of one. More often than not, though, the air conditioner was turned off. ‘Electricity bill too high,’ explained Harish-babu, the head barber.

Harish-babu, as head barber, reserved his cutting talents for the more exalted customers, like Avinash’s father, a professor and thus automatically held in high regard. Avinash had to be content with Lakshman-babu who was probably ten years younger but seemed ancient anyway. They were an odd pair. Harish-babu was tall and thin with wire-rimmed spectacles and white hair that matched his spotless white shirt and dhoti. On bright summer days he glowed like a detergent advertisement. Lakshman-babu was plump and dark, with caterpillar eyebrows. On hot afternoons Avinash could see the beads of sweat gather like hungry flies on his big bald domed forehead. Avinash would stare at them fascinated, trying to will the drops to grow bigger and heavier and heavier until unable to stop themselves they would roll down his forehead. Lakshman-babu always smiled unctuously at Avinash and said, ‘Well, if it’s not the little sahib. Already time for another haircut, eh?’

Then he placed two cushions on the chair so that Avinash’s head would come up to the level of his scissors.

‘My, my, you are growing. Soon you’ll be needing only one cushion. Ha ha ha.’

Scowling fiercely, Avinash would clamber on to the footstool and then on to the chair and plant himself on the cushions. The chair was big and wide and Avinash always felt he was being swallowed whole.

‘Very good, very good,’ Lakshman-babu chortled as he wrapped a starched white sheet around him and knotted it tightly behind Avinash’s neck. He made a few practice swipes with his scissors. Then his big shiny moon-head loomed over his ear.

‘Hold still now, my little gentleman,’ he said, the fingers of his left hand brutally digging into Avinash’s neck and jamming his head in place. ‘We don’t want to cut off a bit of our ears now, do we?’

Avinash bet he did. Avinash bet he kept the ears of young boys in jars. He had once seen a whole baby with three legs in a big jar at the museum. Avinash imagined his ear floating in a jar like that.

By the end of the haircut Avinash had hair all over him and inside his shirt and it tickled and scratched. But the torture was not over yet. One final ritual was left. Lakshman-babu opened his shiny blue powder case, dabbed the pale pink worn-out powder puff vigorously in the cheap talcum powder and then daubed it liberally on Avinash’s neck raising puffy white clouds. Finally satisfied with Avinash’s parted, powdered and tamed look, he pushed the stool forward so Avinash could clamber down to freedom.

Over time the stepping stool went away and then one by one the cushions too but Avinash’s hatred for Lakshman-babu and his haircuts remained undiminished. His stalling attempts at rebellion, however, always came to nothing, thanks to Father Rozario.

Father Rozario was the school prefect. Every now and then, with no warning, he would announce hair-check days. All the boys would wait trembling as he strode into the classroom swinging his slim cane. They would have to turn around and face the wall. Avinash would smell the nicotine on his breath as he came closer and closer, his cane measuring the gap between his hairline and his collar with geometric precision.

‘So what have we here?’ Avinash could feel the cane on the nape of his neck – a gentle tap, almost a loving caress. ‘Is someone trying to be a Hindi film star?’

Little nervous titters.

‘Silence!’ The room fell quiet. ‘Turn around, turn around so I can look at your face.’

Avinash turned around slowly quaking in his shiny black school shoes.

‘What’s your name, boy?’

‘Avinash.’

‘Avinash. Avinash, what?’

‘Mitra, Father.’

‘So, Mr Avinash Mitra, can you touch your neck for me? Yes, right there where the collar is.’

Avinash touched his collar.

‘And what can you feel there?’

Avinash knew the answer because he’d heard the question so many times before. ‘Hair, father.’

‘Hair,’ Father Rozario paused as if Avinash had presented him with a curious new piece of evidence that needed to be mulled over. ‘And Mr Avinash Mitra – do your parents pay your fees so you can attend a reputable school for young men of good families or—’ here he paused for dramatic effect and then his voice took on Biblical thunderousness. ‘Or do you think you are one of those no-good loafer boys who have nothing to do all day except smoke cigarettes and style their hair like good-for-nothing Hindi movie stars?’

Without waiting for an answer, he roared on, seeming to grow larger and larger as if he would crush Avinash under his big toe. ‘We want you to become decent law-abiding citizens. Short hair is a sign of discipline and one thing that St John’s is known for is discipline. I will not let this school turn into a Bombay film studio. You are not here to become movie stars. Your parents don’t pay their good money to see you all grow into louts who can’t hold a job for two days. Do you know why they can’t?’

He jabbed the cane at Avinash and said, ‘Because they have no discipline. And discipline begins with a proper haircut.’ He glared around to see if there were any objections to his theory. Seeing none, he turned back to Avinash. ‘So, Mr Avinash Mitra, put out your hands, palms up.’

Avinash put them out, shaking.

‘Steady, hold them steady!’ Father Rozario barked.

Gritting his teeth, Avinash willed his hands to stop shaking. The cane came whistling down and struck his hand with a sting. Avinash tried to squeeze the tears back. But then the cane came down again and left another smarting stripe.

‘All right, boy, come to my office tomorrow and show me your haircut.’

Avinash nodded mutely. Beside him, Rajiv, whose turn it was next, had almost peed in his pants.

What filled Avinash with even more dread was the prospect of coming home and telling his mother everything. One week ago he was supposed to have had a haircut. But he had put up a bitter fight. He wanted to finish his book. He needed to do his homework. He had a stomach ache. He had to go to Nitin’s house. Nitin’s hair was longer than his. His was not all that long. They had just had a hair-check. Finally, exasperated, his mother had given in. ‘Fine, do whatever you want. You will find out soon enough whether your hair is too long or not.’

And now Avinash would have to tell her that he needed a haircut after all.

Then one day, soon after Avinash’s fourteenth birthday, everything changed. He had gone to New Modern for his monthly ritual and found, to his surprise, a new face. He was much younger than any of the other barbers there. As soon as Avinash saw him he had a vision of Father Rozario’s scowling face. This fellow looked just like the ‘no-good loafer boys’ they had all been warned about. His hair was long – way over his collar – and in the front it was pouffed exactly like a Hindi film star. What was even more shocking was that he had left not one, not two, but three buttons open on his dark blue shirt. In their school Arijit had been caned and given a C-grade for leaving two buttons open. Avinash could see the hair on the barber’s chest and a thin golden chain nestling in it. Harish-babu said, ‘This is Sultan. He is here because Lakshman-babu had to go to his home in Baharampur. His son was hit by a scooter.’

Avinash tried to look concerned but his eyes were hypnotized by the golden chain.

He sat down on the chair.

When Avinash saw Harish-babu coming towards him with his scissors he almost cried out, ‘No.’ He didn’t know why and he didn’t know how to say it without making a complete fool of himself but he really wanted Sultan to cut his hair. Avinash imagined that there was a small stool on the floor which Harish-babu could not see. He imagined him stumbling over it, the scissors flying out of his hand and then Harish-babu himself falling, toppling over, his white dhoti unravelling as his foot caught in it. Avinash imagined all the clumps of hair on the floor rising up like a flurry of pigeons and then settling gently on his white shirt. And his glasses, yes, his glasses would go flying off and hit the little magazine stand with old dog-eared issues of
Reader’s Digest
and
Nabakallol
. And one lens would just pop out and go spinning across the floor.

But there was no stool, and there was no escape. Avinash felt Harish-babu’s coarse fingers tying the white sheet around his neck. In the mirror he saw Sultan and was it his imagination or was he looking at him with a knowing smile? Avinash dropped his eyes in confusion. He saw men like Sultan every day – loitering with cigarettes on street corners. Some days he would stand on the balcony and see them drinking endless cups of tea and smoking. Their loud carefree laughter and scraps of heated arguments would float up, peppered with ‘bad’ words. Acutely conscious of his mother standing beside him he’d pretend he hadn’t heard. But the words would hang in the air obstinately. He would look away but would be inexorably pulled into their conversation, secretly thrilling to the swear words they tossed around with such casual bravado.

When Avinash walked home from school they would be there standing at the corner as if they owned it. The boy from the tea-stall opposite would come by with his kettle filling their cups with hot sweet milky tea. His heart always skipped a beat when he walked by them. In his clean white school uniform with his striped school tie, Avinash felt like a creature from another planet. He was a mother’s boy without his mother to protect him. Avinash felt that they looked at him with the contempt that is reserved exclusively for mothers’ boys. Every time Avinash walked by the corner he would brace himself for a taunt, an insult tossed his way as casually as a cigarette butt. He would swing his satchel on his shoulder and loosen his tie with what he hoped was casual style. Once he even unbuttoned the top two buttons on his shirt. But then Avinash saw Madhu’s mother, who worked next door, returning from the ration shop and quickly buttoned up again. Then he would walk past the young men quietly, his eyes firmly on the road, not sure whether he was hoping they would not notice him or whether he was hoping deep inside him that they would.

Sultan had probably been there as well – laughing uproariously at some dirty joke. And now here he was barely three feet away from him cutting the hair of some fat man who was almost bald anyway. Avinash wanted him to cut his hair because he didn’t know how else he could talk to him. Maybe he would ask him to have a cup of tea with him. But that was just fantasy. In real life Avinash knew he could say little to him other than ‘No, shorter.’

‘Can’t we turn on the air conditioner, Harish-babu?’ Sultan said, wiping his brow.

Harish-babu froze, scissors in mid-air. ‘Air conditioner?’ he said slowly enunciating each syllable.