Saroj Gopal Regmi

As soon as my endless wait for over two hours outside the airport was over, I saw my Uncle and Aunt approach me with the cute cousin in the stroller. I was ecstatic to see them after a long time. I didn’t know what to say and I waited for them to start the conversation as we took a ride in

the cab. I thought they would take the more conventional way to start the conversation with something like “Oh my, how tall you have become” but my aunt’s first words after six years “Saroj get a haircut; your mom has asked me to see to it that you get a haircut,” echoed in my ears for some time in disbelief. What a great way to gather the memories of six long years and to strip me off my four-month-old hair!

Defying my mother and my auntie would bring forth a lot of consequences so I took the easier route and went to a barber on the same day. The barber’s beaming “pepsodent” teeth made me remember those Hindi mythological epis-odes in which the demon displays a devilish smile before pounding upon the helpless innocents. As the barber surveyed my hair with the air of a general on a reconnaissance mission, I began to realise that my parents were no different from other parents of a teenager.

They were not immune to the hypocritical myth that growing long hair is to become a gunda, as my grandpa so often says. This is just one of the preconceived notions that affect our lives so much. Even though my parents know that there is nothing wrong with me, they want me to adhere to certain restrictions so that they are not looked upon as parents of a gunda.

Everyone teaches us not to judge a book by its cover but that has only remained a footnote: hardly anybody judges people through other means. The clothes we don and the ways we follow are always under the society’s scanner. Even though I hated both the hypocrisy and the haircut, I had to endure them and I know I will have to do the same in future as well. After the haircut, I thought that I would keep a really long hair when I would be independent and the oldest one in the family. My grandpa was the happiest one to see me after the haircut. But his bald head provided some food for thought — may be I should forget the idea of growing long hair!