Day They Shaved My Head
At sixty five, I am at a senior home run by nuns, overlooking the cobalt shimmer of the Arabian sea. The sea rumbles menacingly at a close distance. The nuns run around with billowing robes and capes, picking up trash, clipping clothes on the clothesline, and shouting orders. Heat blanches the ochre sea-sand and ripples tremble like disc lights on the wall behind me. I have been propped up on a high barber chair right in front of the wall, under the shadow of an Astoria tree. A bougainvillea shrub creeps up, shoots a sprig of fuchsia flowers and forms an arch above us. I used to be petrified by the winter Astoria bloom during my childhood, as we were told yakshis loved its sweet sticky smell and hovered around them, dropping flowers and leaves in the evening. As an old woman, I sit under its shade all day talking to the yakshis who live among its foliage, pleading to them for company. Sometimes, they talk back, ruffling their invisible feathers, dropping a few bougainvillea petals at my feet, reciprocating my feelings.
The barber is a hairy man with a head full of permed curls that spill down into his ears and eyes like twisted pasta. He balances me on the chair like a doll and wraps me up tightly with a black apron. I cannot move, and I smell the rancid apron and watch a pale grey louse crushed with nails on its faux silky skin. A stout nun with a thin, pencil moustache on her face points at my head and instructs him with a mask tightly clutched in her hand. Her knuckles shine as the barber wrinkles his nose, shrugs his shoulder.
My mother folded her hands and frowned at me.
"You have no parenting skills," I made a face at her; amma squatted and pulled up my hair to twist it into a bun.
She threw up her hands, “You hair is too unwieldy. I give up.”
I try to fold my hands beneath the apron but it’s too tight for me to move. The barber straightens me up, sprays my hair with a sprinkler and runs a comb into it. My hair is stubborn and tangled; it pulls the skin on my scalp. I twitch with pain. The nun holds my hands under the apron, spraying spittle on my face as she shouts at me to stay calm. Sometimes, I cannot hear what she shouts. She has a firmer grip than my mother; I wiggle under the apron. The barber pins me down with his strong arms.
I take a deep breath, hang my head down. "One, two, three…." I am supposed to count as I breathe in and out. The new doctor who resembles my eldest son had taught me that. Lungs full of salty air calms me down. Avi is coming to meet me today.
The sentry's balding head shines like a steel plate in the sun. My husband had a balding crown-like him, which bothered him throughout his forties. At one time, he applied a layer of glue on his crown, stuck his thin hair on it and ran a wooden comb over it. "It looks ridiculous", I giggled. He turned back sharply and walked away, banging the door.
"Stop giggling, amma." The sentry's grip tightens like a noose.
The barber throws the comb aside and pokes the blade of the scissors into my hair. Ouch ! It hurts.
"Sit still", he whispers impatiently. A gust of wind ridiculously lifts the nun’s headgear and I catch a glimpse of her balding head too.
I cannot stop giggling.
The barber pokes the blade into my head again. A stench of rot and decay fills the air, I feel lice crawling down my forehead, tapping on my skin with their teeny-weeny feet. The barber bends forward to retch. The nun holds her nose. The sentry also looks away, not loosening the grip for a minute.
Clumps of dreadlocks fall on my lap and scatter on the floor. A beeline of lice creeps down my neck. I want to pick them up one by one and squash them under my nails. . I struggle to push the sentry push away, but he is far too strong.
My husband had this firm, purple grip too.
It was a rainy day, and it had been raining non-stop for two days. After our first son was born, we lived in one rented house or the other. We were literally asked to move out of the ancestral house after the first son was born. My father leaned down, picked up my six month old and cradled him like a nurse, grooving the baby's wobbly head on his elbow-creek.
"I may have to throw out my son-in-law soon, he’s not the person he pretends to be." He said, looking at me cautiously, still cooing at the baby.
I felt the gentle quiver of my eyelashes under my eyes. There was a storm brewing, the sky was gathering its strongest elephant clouds. From the window, I could see my maid shift from one foot to another, with a gunny bag toted in her arms. My husband looked down, holding the parapet and balancing on one foot. My father, bare-bodied, pointed his fingers and threw up his arms. My husband never looked up at my father. The maid wiped her tears with the tip of her lungi and walked down the steps into the pouring rain.
My father kept shouting at her as she walked away. I saw the back of my husband's hunched shoulders and my father's fury-twisted face. My father rolled a betel leaf and pushed it into his mouth. He chewed twenty-four times before spitting out a red trail of red spittle into the needles of rain that battered the patio. My husband talked back something animatedly before storming into my nursing room. My baby squiggled and began to cry; I blew gently on his forehead to keep him away from evil eyes. I didn't have the time to pack my stuff; my husband gripped my hand firmly and pulled me out of the house. I kept resisting. Then he took a handful of my hair and dragged me out of the house.
In the distance, I can hear the triumphant roar of fishermen pulling in their nets. I see their black bodies glisten under the glare of the sun. Clumps of matted hair fall on my shoulders and my lap. The sentry has relaxed his grip. I turn my wrists and look at the purple patches on my wrists. He walks away and waits at a safe distance, watching me. I want to twitch and giggle. I like to watch the sentry's cautious eyes catch the warning signal and fire up .
The fishermen start pulling the nets. A line of lice creep down to my cleavages. I look at the nun through the corner of my eyes. She doesn't take her eagle eyes off me. An elderly white tourist woman dressed in a white see-through shirt hops around, taking a few snaps and volunteers to pull the nets. She must be my age, but far smarter. The fishermen laugh and wave at her to join them. I peer at her shirt to see if she is wearing a bra underneath. There’s a lot of red and peach skin under her shirt, like blanched tomatoes. “Shameless woman!” I grit my teeth.
After we moved in to a rented house, my husband asked me to make fish moiley at home. The booty of his ambassador car was loaded with seer fish and anchovies.
"Seer fish is perfect for fish moiley. But you have a truckload of them!" I exclaimed as the fish spilled into the car porch when he opened the booty. A couple of fish were wiggling and sparkling under the sun , still gasping for breath.
"There was a chakara. One of my friends called me up, and I drove to the beach as quickly as possible. Uma, grab what we need for a week. After that, I will go and distribute the remaining fish to my friends." He pulled out the wallet from his pants and started counting the money. He recounted it and looked up, pushing his chin up with his forefinger. His nails looked like fish scales.
I tried to grab as many fish as possible and filled the bucket. The starry sparkle, the sea smell, and the weed entangled fish gasping for air kind of excited me.
"Go easy, Uma!