The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

 

"Solpa edagade kattarsi", that's JR, my other half.

"You want me to cut a little more?"

JR vigorously shakes his head and repeats, "Illa. Solpa edagade kattarsi"

I admonish him with a gentle pat on his scalp and say, "Adhuna mastakam na chaalayathu."

JR is aghast. "Hey, forget my Kannada and your Sanskrit. I hope you realize you're holding the scissors right there on my head!"

Me: That's precisely what I just told you, "not to shake your head now" lest I scalp a slice of it!

Me: And just by the way, you began it all by showing off your knowledge of Kannada by giving me some instruction in the language when you know very well that I have barely progressed beyond solpa gotthu! So I presumed you wanted a little more of your hair, cut.

JR: My head looks a holy mess, shapeless with this cut. I'm looking a joker with it. I think I was better off resembling MKT Bhaghavatar with a flowing mane.

Me: The flowing mane is certainly true. But you forget the gleaming lunar pivotal core that glistens with pearly drops under the bright sun.

JR: I guess I should have waited for the salon to open!

Me: Cool, man; just relax. I'm not yet done. I know I certainly can't take our evening walks alongside you, looking like an urichi vitta kozhi (Tamil for "a chicken with its feathers plucked").

My face suffuses with a huge reflex smile as I utter this family phrase and recall the associated haircut "anthem", R thalai C thalai, hoi. I am vaulting back several decades and taking a nostalgic trip down memory lane. I was in my early teens, and Krishnan and Krishna, my cousin and brother, born 22 days apart, were in their single digit years. The inseparable pair and partners in mischief unlimited, had created this hilarious package: this 5-word song set to their own tune, accompanied by imaginative choreography that involved rhythmic steps resembling a swinging pendulum. The protagonists of the song, R and C, (their names obviously kept under wraps) were a couple of paternal uncles. Despite the generously oiled, thick crop of jet black hair that adorned their skulls, you could not call them the crowning glory, for something was not right about their heads. It was the weird undulating terrain and topography of their heads that inspired my brothers to create this 'opera' that would have us in splits.

Years later, my kids and niece added a line more to make the original, a couplet! And as my son says, the composition will go down in the annals of the PKS family history and will echo in the portals of our homes, no matter in which part of the globe ours members dwell.

I am jolted out of my reverie as a very sportive JR decides to click a selfie with the two of us - he the guinea pig, and I, already becoming an expert at my new profession. Yeah, you guess right. Hair-stylist. JR would perhaps call me tonsorial artist! At the end of a good half an hour, neither of us knows what style it is - looks like a mushroom cut from the right side of his face, a crew cut from an obtuse angle. Perhaps in toto, it's the trendy bowl cut that coming back! Well, there ends the knowledge of my vocabulary in relation to men's hairstyles. And just by the way, I decide to make this our 40th Wedding Anniversary gift to him, given a day early!

Covid-19 has not been too bad I guess. I get into the act and display a shade of Atma nirbhartha at one of its best.

 

 

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