Snippety-Snip. Snip, Snip, SNAP!

She who wields the scissors, (the Rini of ‘Rini’s’?) cut through one’s tresses with a dedication suited to a better cause – like clearing up the Chambal, or stopping people wearing low-slung jeans, or Dev Anand from making any more movies, to name but a few. One resolutely closed one’s eyes tight, and prayed the hardest in one’s life ever, and swore never to sin again, if one emerged looking humanoid after the attack.
After Scissorhands and the Others were done with one, and one had managed to get one’s hair (whatever was left of it), out of one’s eyes, and managed to locate one’s specs, one chanced a look in the mirror.

One is interested to note that one’s crowning glory, which hitherto extended its vertical freefall to one’s waist, now stops shy of one’s mid shoulder. It now executes wild turns and curves, fluffs up around one’s face, curves around one’s chin, and looks rather movie-star like. One is in turn, curious, interested, enthralled, aghast and then mortally fearful.

One encounters soul-searching questions like –

What does one say in one’s defense to an irate mother and an even more irate mother-of-mother (when she comes)?
What does one do if one’s pupils mistake one for a porcupine? Or Einstein? Or My Little Pony? Or Milind Soman?
What does one do if one gets a Faceoff scare when one looks at one’s face in the mirror in sleep induced delirium?
How does one get along without one’s trusty companion of eleven years – one’s braid - quite literally hanging around one?
Does one now become a possessor of hairpins, banana clips, butterfly clips and scrunchies? One may just go bananas.
Or does one become one of ‘those types’ who leaves their hair open? (gasp! One has never done it, except while drying out one’s curls after a shampoo!) One has always found it mildly indecent. (the leaving hair open bit, not the shampoo bit)

One thinks (involuntarily), of one’s last Experiments with Hairy Truths. How one was called ‘cute’ when one wanted to be taken seriously in one’s new boy-cut in grade 4, and how one had fled home those long years ago, and had never, ever cut one’s hair again. Ever.
One resolves to go home and plait whatever is left of one’s keratiny dead-cells. One loves one’s keratiny dead-cells.
One dreads Monday with a new and powerful dread - the dread of the Newly Hair-Styled. Indescribable.



Shraddha, the things I do for you…..You better name your first child after me. Even if it is a boy. Call him Elizabethan or something.