The first lock of hair skid off my scalp and onto the ground twenty four hours after what was a perfect day. The barber stopped shaving and proceeded to apply a generous coat of scented water on my scalp. "Very rough. Has it been ages since your scalp saw any sign of oil. You city people..." he mumbled something to himself in a continuously decreasing tone. As he ran his hands over my head in familiar patterns - to him, not me - I let the soothing massage take me back to the events of the day before.

...

"Perfect." My loud declaration reverberated throughout the empty dining hall at Hotel Prakash where we had come in for an early lunch. The echo, more than my saying so caught her off guard and she scowled momentarily before going back to being her jocular self. "Why don't you lower your tone? The last thing I want is for someone to notice," she said in a hushed whisper that I could still hear clearly thanks to the acoustics of the hall. I looked around and then at her and shrugged.

"Yeah, right. I know no one is around, but I don't want you to get used to being so boisterous," she pointed a spoon in my direction, brandishing it as though it were a dagger that would see the core of my heart if I were to disobey.

Get used to! I was on cloud nine and yet I chose not to be exuberant. The last thing I wanted was for me to render the crush immutable and suffer a lifetime of the proverbial if-only agony. And so, I smiled a yes-ma'am smile and we were back on good terms. Like I said, the hall was empty, empty of even waiters and food basins that one usually associates with a dining hall in a large restaurant. But then, this was the air-conditioned hall that one usually never used as it meant paying more for the same food. It was also special in that it showed no hint of conditioned air flowing through the many ducts more often than not. That day, it was indeed cool and yet, I was sweating in excitement.

She asked me to get used to...! The day kept getting better when I thought it couldn't. Here I was, with a cute and cheerful crush of mine that showed all signs of being a potential long term alliance. She was the quintessential home-grown girl - sweet, informed of all unnecessary matters made worse by notions. She could put a person in his place with aplomb and without him realising it for a good two three days. She was excited about everything she saw of the outside world - something she didn't know existed about three months ago. She could talk as much as I did and was someone whom I could court over cups of parched lentil sauce and cooked raw-rice. In a nutshell, it was a pure-vegetarian's dream come true.

"Sure. I'll get used to whatever you want me to," I said leaning a little into her, "I am being discreet as you suggested." She laughed gaily and we proceeded to devour the food, our fingers brushing occasionally when we went for the same item. After a sumptuous meal, we walked to the dessert kiosk outside the restaurant - she, to have some ice cream and I to munch a beeda, a delicacy made from a jelly-like concoction with an assortment of dry-fruits,parched areca nuts and slaked lime paste wrapped in a betel leaf and sealed with a clove. A double scoop and two beedas later, having done justice to our little lunch date, we left on my rickety moped towards her hostel.

"We should have lunch next week too," I said and she, now in her dormitory-demeanour, acknowledged by merely nodding and giving me the occasional subdued glance as she walked the road to her decrepit hostel ward.

I rode back to office, wrote some good code, created the most romantic test data for testing our software for a hospital, and finally left home a happy man. I had never gone beyond a customary hello and a daily smile before being called a brother until then and was so blown over, I booked a ticket to Srirangam for that night to get my head tonsured.

"To Srirangam to get your head tonsured?" My mother threw a glance at me that would have killed me any other day. "I suggest you go to Gunaseelam instead, or Sholingur. Lunatic." I ignored this pejorative as I always did, bundled up a dhoti and an upper cloth with the usual set of colonial clothes. My father didn't do more than look up from his newspaper and nod when I said I was leaving for the bus stand. As the bus ploughed through everything else that was on the road on its way, swerving and swiveling at will, I had pleasant dreams of our coasting through the skies on a flying carpet, swerving and swiveling to avoid the stars and moons as we held hands and fed each other spoons of parched tamarind sauce.

...

"Saar," the barber's voice brought me back to the present - a shanty abutting the Kollidam tributary of the river Kaveri, smelling of cow dung and of myriad oils and hair gel that kept the mounds of hair from being carried away by the stiff breeze. I checked the scalp, ran my hands to ensure a little tuft was there and paid him his fee. The remainder of the day passed by rather uneventfully, with nothing but a memorable sight of the Lord, excellent soda at the shop by the southern temple gate, a sumptuous lunch at my grandmother's place and a siesta to speak of. I dreamt of a trip to the temple with her, and the priest blessing us with food offered to the deity. It was a lavish serving of rice, parched tamarind sauce and a pouch of thenkuzhal, a delicacy the temple is known more for than the deity himself. I must say there were other scenes too, our having gone fairly deep into our relationship over the course of seven or eight dream segments, scenes I absolutely can't write about. Soon, it was time to return and return I did.

When I got to to work the next day, everyone seemed to be throwing furtive glances at me. I expected this to some extent, as my head is the likeness of the head of a sauropod, with a prominent hump right in the middle - not a sight by any means. But then they weren't merely looking surreptitiously, but were scowling and I knew something was amiss. It took a lot of talking-to-the-hand and some cajoling for me to know why. I had, two days ago, done the unthinkable that rubbed two diametrically opposite sets of people on the wrong side at the same time - a feat if you ask me. The more reasonable ones were upset that I had asked a hitherto submissive girl out on a date and she had been sulking about it as though it were a cardinal sin that would taint her and seven generations of her family backwards until the great deluge.

Thankfully, my tonsured head did its bit to douse many a wagging tongue that had been fanned by my absence the previous day. Several theories from my having gone on a pilgrimage to my mourning someone close to my having scalp issues served to subdue the matter, as it didn't go with the possibility of my courting the girl. I was treated with a great degree of perfunctory sympathy as the day passed and I heaved a sigh of relief.

No amount of reasoning in the period of calm helped. It turned into an episode that was borne with grit, accepted with resignation, relegated and then forgotten altogether when other interests took its place. A half-decade later a woman who ate Pizza in addition, and one who had similar traits of disdain and innocent disregard became my wife. All was forgotten for a good four or so years - until this morning.

...

I was looking for an address in an unknown locality and rode my bike, my head doing the drone's job while the trained muscles did the driving and obstacle-avoiding. I instinctively braked hard at one corner, and looked ahead to find a woman who was bent down and blissfully engaged in her business of adorning the road with kolam - food for both the artist and the ant. She was the usual marriage-beaten kind - washed and fresh at seven with a carelessly knotted bun peeking precariously from within a towel wrapped around the head and wearing a faded sari that is usually reserved for such affairs. I wasn't a picture of grace either, with a blob of a belly, possessing lower eyelids held up by dark circles and a hairline that threatened to desert me the next time a respectable breeze blew. In short, we had gone from being a jar and its lid to being a mop-stick and the sponge-head.

At the sound of my braking, she lifted her head up, wiped the sweat off her brow with the back of her rice-floured hand and looked at me. After a moment of uncertainty and hesitation, her eyes widened. Mine did too.

"What a surprise?" she said, "Come in. Must be at least ten years?" she said. I followed her inside.

"Here!" she called out in a shrill voice even as she pointed me in the direction of a chair. "Eight, nine at most," I said as I sat down, "A pleasant surprise. How are you?"

A pious simpleton with a face peering out of an array of sacred ash marks entered the living room and smiled an affable smile.

"This must be your husband," I said and we got introduced over a cup of coffee. A little child wailed and the husband promptly stood up. "Please stay for lunch," he extended an exaggerated courtesy before going away to take care of the baby.

"What brings you here?" she asked once he was out of earshot.

"I was looking for an address here when I stumbled upon you," I said.

She eyed the card and then me. "This is an art school. You still hope to make it big as an artist?" she said, her old self making a grand entrance.

"Nah! I have no such illusions. I am looking to enroll my son here."

"Oh! You have a son? You never told me."

I smiled sheepishly when I should've frowned. "Not such a big deal considering one doesn't have to go to school to learn the art." I shrugged.

"Knowing you..." she said and paused as her husband returned.

"I've heard a lot about you. You must have lunch with us," he insisted again, as though he was looking for someone to help him see through an adversity.

"I sure wish I could, but I have to go. My wife and kid must be waiting for me," I said apologetically. He seemed resigned to his fate of having to wade through the purgatory on his own.

"Come on!" she said, joining her husband in his plea. "Coincidentally, it is your favourite parched tamarind sauce that I have made today!"

I am sure the husband must still be wondering why I said, "I have nothing left on my head to offer to the Lord of Srirangam," as I shot up and hurried out of the house.