I have been growing hair for the past few months. I was under the impression that I have started looking like a hunk and ignored bad hair days and the fight against and dandruff and the cost of various hair gels and oils. Then the summer reached its peak and as 80 percent of body heat escapes through the head and the hair effectively blocks heat escaping, I was suffering like an unsheared sheep in a beach resort. Yet I ignored suggestions from my roommates and friends to get a hair cut. I thought they were jealous of my dense mane because one of them, whose bald plate shines like an oversized black pearl in the sun, was particularly persistent.

But after a series of sleepless nights I decided I should at least trim or cut through the growth for ventilation. I went to my usual barber shop which I used to frequent when I was conditioned to believe that a haircut is a sign of cleanliness. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The shop had shut shop! May be there were many like me among their customers. I walked back and decided to procrastinate the haircut when I spotted a ‘Men’s beauty parlor’. I decided to give it a shot and entered it. It was empty except for a thin man with betel juice stained teeth. He would have looked appropriate as a vagrant barber, but somehow was a misfit in a ‘beauty parlor’ strictly in terms of beauty.

I entrusted my heavy fur to his scissors and comb and tried to explain to him in my patchy Hindi that ventilation was my goal and not deforestation. He seemed to have understood me and proceeded to clear the undergrowth leaving the canopy behind. He first secured the canopy safely to one side of the head using a comb. Then he proceeded to clear the undergrowth with the apparent skills an Indian mali has in shearing a Newfoundland sheep. This I understood because he lacked all sense of proportion and symmetry and soon I had an asymmetrical head rather dangerously leaning to the left. He stopped cutting hair and took stock of the situation and asked me if he could shorten my hair. Since I did not want to start a new trend in hairstyling, which could be called the left-not so liberal-style, I agreed. That dude was apparently a grass cutter in an Indian cricket pitch as he did a good job and I soon gazed at a much younger and cleaner me in the mirror. I liked what I saw. I was looking like a college kid and some sort of innocence had returned to my face. I felt cooler (literally) than I had felt in months.

Now the babes in the new office have started noticing my presence and I am liking it. Now I have an explanation for me being girl friend-less for so long. It was my hair. And yesterday my roommate told me that it is only now he realized how shabby I used to look with all that hair. So, all the potential girl friends out there, you have a neat, dandruff-free, non-smelly me to choose.

And last two nights, I slept well.