by Adithi Rao
He befriended the photographer Mallesh at the Chitrakala Photo Studio and convinced him to shoot a portfolio for him in his free time. Gopala, who was excellent at all things electrical, promised to set up and maintain the gadgets in Mallesh’s hopefully-soon-to-be-opened photo studio, free of charge, for the rest of his life in exchange for this one favour. Mallesh himself had worked and saved diligently to set up a place of his own for close to five years now. He valued people’s dreams and didn’t dismiss Gopala’s. Moreover, money was tight and Gopala’s offer was tempting. They shook hands on it.
Various outfits were selected and set aside: mostly jeans that had been strategically torn in places, denim jackets and T-shirts. Accessories had been matched (including a single clip-on earring and an imitation leather wristband). Gopala’s friend Shubham, who owned a guitar, had agreed to lend him his instrument for the big day, whenever it may come.
The problem was that the big day might never come. It was the hair. The hair was putting a spoke in the wheel. Gopala’s haircuts lent themselves better to a career in the army than in show business. And while Sheshadri Saab had breath in his body, the hair on Gopala’s head would never be allowed to grow beyond half an inch. Gopala had tried every trick in the book but with little result. Even feigned illnesses had failed to convince, and when Gopala pretended to be bedridden for some time just to get out of having his hair cut, Sheshadri simply requested Anthony to pay a house visit and do the honours right there in the sick room. Anthony, who considered Sheshadri his patron, gladly obliged.
People pray all the time but secretly doubt that their prayers will ever be answered. But Gopala was no doubting Thomas. He prayed for a miracle and one day his prayers were answered in the form of a telegram. Sheshadri’s business associates overseas had requested his presence in London to accept a lucrative contract. This would involve a tortuous journey followed by a long stay in that country, surveying their multiple factories to gauge the exact nature of materials they would require for production. Sheshadri could be abroad for anywhere between a month and forty-five days. This was the first time he would be away from home for so long, and was counting on his younger brothers to run the family business in his absence, even though they had steady jobs of their own.
Nobody realized how wonderfully liberating it would be to have him gone until he actually went. The whole family turned out to see him off at the Rudrapura Station (from where he was to take the train to Bangalore, then a flight to Bombay, and then another one to London). They smiled and waved and wondered how they would get on for even a day without him. But then the train disappeared around the bend in the tracks and they remained there in stupefied silence, staring blankly at the place where the train had stood only moments before. Suddenly, Gopala broke the stillness by dropping to his knees on the platform and weeping noisily into his hands. His mother and aunts hurried around to console him, and his cousins forgot to sneer. Only the grandmother, Sheshadri’s old mother, watched from a distance and offered no sympathy. She knew, as nobody else did, that he was weeping from a sense of buoyancy so unfamiliar that it was almost more then he could bear.
One morning, precisely twenty-nine days after Sheshadri Saab’s departure for England, the sleeping figure of Gopala, covered in a blanket from head to toe, was shaken awake by his mother’s impatient hand. In the background, a bhajan played on the radio and the old grandmother could be heard singing along, groaning tunelessly. From the kitchen, Lakshmi hummed the same song in perfect melody.
‘Gopi! Gopi, get up! I’ve called you a hundred times already!’ chided his mother. The bangles on her hands jingled and danced as she busily folded blankets and rolled-up mattresses from the floor all around her son. Gopala did not stir. She shook him again, but this time he merely grunted and turned onto his side. His father was away, and until he returned, Gopala would be damned if he let anybody disturb his slumber before nine in the morning. Fourteen-year-old Sridhara, dressed in school uniform, walked into the room to find his aunt surveying her son in despair.
‘You have to go to college, Gopi,’ she pleaded. ‘If you miss any more classes, you will not have enough attendance to sit for your exams!’
Sridhara grinned and tapped his aunt on the shoulder. ‘I’ll show you how to wake him up, Doddamma. Just wait for a second.’ He ran out of the room and reappeared with a pair of scissors. His aunt watched him suspiciously as he squatted down next to his sleeping cousin, held the scissors close to where his ear was under the blanket, and made brisk snipping noises. Instantly, the blanket flew off and Gopala’s frightened, sleepy face emerged to look about in alarm.
‘Who … wha … don’t cut!’ he yelled, throwing his arms over his head protectively. Then he caught sight of Sridhara’s impish face hovering over him and subsided with a muttered, ‘I’ll kill you.’
Sridhara laughed loudly and the mother smiled in spite of herself.
‘Look at you, just look at your hair,’ she grumbled. ‘You’ve become a karadi-talé! Your appa will have a heart attack if he comes back and finds a bear in place of his son. He’ll kill us both for sure.’
Turning away, she hauled up another mattress and dumped it in the corner over two others. ‘Sleeping and sleeping. He should wake up and help me lift these beddings. My back … ayyo devare!’ she groaned.
Gopala looked around the room sleepily and asked, ‘Where are the others? Where’s Murali Anna?’
‘He left for work two hours ago,’ replied his mother.
‘In fact, he must be having his coffee break by now!’ suggested Sridhara slyly as he fastened his watch to his wrist. ‘Baruttene, Doddamma. When Amma comes back from the market, tell her I’ve left for school.’
Once he was gone, Mrs Sheshadri turned back to her son and said sternly, ‘You’d better get your hair cut. It has reached your neck and started to curl there. Appa will be returning from London next week. He’ll hit the roof if he sees you like this.’
‘Not till I’ve got my portfolio done. I’ve been waiting for this opportunity for ages and my hair is finally almost long enough. Just another three-four days and then it will be perfect for styling. I’ll probably never get a chance like this again.’
‘For what do you need a portfolio?’ asked his mother in exasperation. ‘You’re going to become an engineer and join your appa’s business.’
Gopala stopped folding his sheet to glare at her. The prospect she was painting of his future made him feel horribly claustrophobic. Swallowing, he replied defiantly, ‘I’m going to pierce my ear also, just wait and see! Then I’ll look really cool.’ He took perverse pleasure in tormenting her for his father’s sins. But instead of getting upset by this new threat, she merely snorted and said, ‘You’ll look like a woman. Long hair and earrings! Next time the bangle seller goes by, I’ll pick up a dozen for you also, shall I?’
Disappointed, Gopala demanded, ‘What’s wrong with an earring? You got all our ears pierced when we were born, no? What’s wrong with my doing it again now?’
‘It’s the Brahmin tradition to pierce children’s ears. There are health benefits, that’s why we do it.’
‘What health benefits?’ demanded Gopala.
‘How will I know?’ shrugged his mother and left the room.
‘Say what you want,’ Gopala called after her, gathering up his towel and throwing it over his shoulder. ‘I’m going to do it. And by the time Appa gets home, it’ll be too late for him to stop me!’
Grimly, he stalked off to the bathroom.
Forty-five minutes later, Gopala emerged, sporting a flashy black shirt with silver studs and torn jeans. His hair was styled and gelled. As he surveyed himself in the mirror, charming smile in place, he decided that he had certainly found his ‘look’, and that he was nothing short of handsome.
‘Ugly,’ his grandmother informed him unemotionally when he came downstairs five minutes later. Gopala’s heart missed a beat. People said his eighty-two-year-old ajji was senile, but somehow she had always made
sense to him. Now her words made him doubt himself for the first time. Then Lakshmi Atte smiled and said in her kindly way, ‘I think you look very smart, Gopi,’ and Gopala felt his confidence soar again.
‘Summne iri, Ajji. Nimage fashion bagge yenu gotide?’ he demanded of his grandmother, stealing a vada from Sharada’s plate. He had a point there. What did his grandmother, at her age, know about fashion, after all? Calmly, the old lady went on sipping her coffee. In all this, Gopala entirely missed the aghast expression on his aunts’ faces at the sight of him, and the sniggers of his cousin sisters, Janani and Sharada.
‘Where are you off to dressed like that? College?’ demanded Chitra Chikkamma, Sheshadri’s youngest sister-in-law.
Gopala, looking very important and trying to be casual, replied, ‘Photo studio.’
‘Eeynakke?’ she asked suspiciously, while his mother shook her head in the background.
‘Ayyo, Chikkamma, saaku! Stop asking questions and give me breakfast, no? I’m in a hurry! I have to get my ear pierced on the way,’ said Gopala in exasperation. The general attitude in the room was really beginning to dampen his shirts. Before Chitra could react, Lakshmi ladled out idlis into a plate and set it down in front of him.
‘Thank you, Lakshmi Atte. The rest of you stop staring! When I become a film star, you’ll—’
Suddenly Chitra said, ‘Shh! Shh!’ in a low, urgent way, and Gopala’s mother hurried to the door with a forced bright smile, saying, ‘You didn’t send a telegram, nothing?’ Her discomfiture was evident.
Sharu and Janani turned to see what was going on and gasped. They jumped up nervously. Lakshmi recovered her composure and followed her sister-in-law to the front door.
Gopala, lost in his bowl of sambar and in visions of his glorious future, was the last to notice the shift in the mood of the room. But when he did look up, the sight that met his eyes caused him to choke on his idli. There was his father, standing at the threshold, his suitcases on the floor all around him. The women’s attempts to cover up for Gopala had failed. Sheshadri had been standing there a full two minutes before Chitra had noticed his presence, and he had heard every word that had been spoken. Ignoring his wife and sister, he looked only at Gopala. His expression was unfathomable, but his tall, broad-shouldered frame silhouetted in the open doorway was a daunting sight. Gopala cowered, the pomp leaving him in a rush.
No words were spoken, no questions asked. Fifteen minutes later, Gopala was in Anthony’s chair, towel about his shoulders, while locks of precious, painstakingly grown hair came down around his ears, bringing his castles in the air tumbling with them. For the first time in four years Sheshadri had accompanied his son to the barber’s shop again. It was a demotion, a vote of no-confidence, so to speak. A shove backwards into untrustworthy childhood.
‘Tell me about the barbershops in England, Sheshadri Saab,’ said Anthony, pleased to have his mentor back. ‘They are very big? Lots of modern instruments?’
‘Modern instruments, my foot!’ replied Sheshadri. ‘How much technology do you need to cut hair? Just money-making devices to loot the customers! The salons there are big but they don’t have the sense of comfort that this place does, Anthony. And do you know they charge eight pounds for a haircut? That is nearly 250 rupees!’
Anthony was shocked. ‘250 rupees? Yesu! That’s robbery!’
They chatted on, but Gopala heard nothing. He kept his head lowered so that nobody would see the silent tears drop into his lap, and gently fingered a lock of hair that landed on his arm.
Dreams, like seasons, come and go. With the passing of years, Gopala sowed and harvested new ones. Not all were his own; some came from family, others from friends, one or two from a college sweetheart. But the dreams that endured were the ones that were handed to him by his father. Such was the atmosphere at the Sheshadri household that its inhabitants invariably stopped questioning and simply accepted things the way they were. Forcing their square pegs into round holes every day, they may have sensed (without acknowledging) the sadness that inevitably accompanies disappointed dreams.
Sometime in his nineteenth year, good sense hit and the mirror finally told Gopala the truth — hair or no hair, he could never be a film star. He gave up hoping and moved on to other things. He got into engineering college in Bangalore and made it through the five years with relative ease, being intelligent and reasonably hardworking when the fancy took him. His father approved of this heartily, and showed it by offering him a place in the family business at the end of his studies.
During his hostel years, Gopala came to see the practicality of keeping one’s hair short. It certainly made it easier in view of the fact that hostel life involved maintaining so many other things. There were the clothes to be washed and ironed, the books, the room to be cleaned and the food to be looked into – things that his mother and aunts had done for him so unobtrusively back home. He learnt to value those women more, and by the end of the month, when money was scarce, he missed Anthony. Here in Bangalore the cost of a haircut was priced at twenty-five, sometimes thirty rupees, while the Decent Haircutting Saloon still charged fifteen. And each time he sat in the imitation leather chairs of the barbershops he frequented in the city, the old pang in his heart at the first snip of the scissors became less and less noticeable.
Years passed and Gopala returned home to join his father’s business. The salary was decent and it came with PF and pension too. Nobody treated him like royalty in the office. He was expected to begin at the bottom. Sheshadri Saab was quite clear about that.
And so it was that Gopala, at twenty-four, was back in the wooden chair at Anthony’s. The Decent Haircutting Saloon (Gents Onely Plis) had undergone some changes. The asbestos roof had been replaced with Mangalore tiles, the walls had been whitewashed, and the hand-embroidered, dirt-stained wedding cushion covers had abnegated in favour of darker, more hardy ones. Anthony, now well into his seventies, was thin and gregarious as ever, if a little more stooped. And yet it was more than the salon and its proprietor that was different that day. It was Gopala and the light dancing in his eyes. The joyful smile on a face rendered almost handsome, as he surveyed the crew cut Anthony had just given him.
‘It is perfect, Anthony Uncle!’ he exclaimed as he examined his reflection in the mirror from all angles.
Anthony’s old eyes crinkled into a smile. ‘What time my Gopal baba has to be waking up tomorrow morning?’
‘Four, I think.’
‘Four? How you will be managing?’ asked Anthony.
‘No problem, Anthony Uncle. I am used to getting up early. The whole time that I was studying for engineering, I used to wake up at that time only, sometimes earlier!’
‘But surely the wedding won’t start that early, no?’ asked Anthony. ‘The card says…’
‘The muhurtha is at eight, but there will be other ceremonies before that. You’ll be coming to the wedding, no?’
‘Won’t I?’ asked Anthony, and a look of quiet affection passed between them.
An unspoken bond tied these two men together, a story strengthened by years marked off on a calendar, by the number of haircuts, by the wrinkles on Anthony’s face. Gopala as an infant, screaming while Anthony gave him his first haircut, childhood kindnesses, boyhood resentments, youthful resignation, manly acceptance. Four rupees, six rupees, ten rupees, twelve, laid down on the counter of the Decent Haircutting Saloon, month after month, year after year.
Yes, deep was the bond, yet deeper the chasm. For Anthony was a poor man, whose poverty had set him free to do the thing he loved best, even if that thing had been unspectacular. In living his dream, he was a happy man.
Whereas Gopala, born to wealth and social stature, had been trained to awaken from dreams to live in a reality of his father’s design. In learning to like it, he was never to be sure whether he was truly happy, or had only learnt to think of himself as being so.
Their mutual affection would never transmute into understanding. For, bound by the nature of his o
wn choices, neither could be privy to the workings of the other’s heart.
That day, the one before his wedding day, Gopala got out of the barber’s chair and gently laid down fifteen rupees on the counter. But this time, Anthony shook his head. ‘This haircut is free. My wedding present to Gopal baba.’
Touched, Gopala smiled. Putting the money back into his pocket, he left the salon.
SHREE ANEGUDDE SWAMY PRASANNA
Smt Krishnaveni & Shri K.J. Sheshadri
Solicit your gracious presence
with family and friends
to the naming ceremony of their eldest grandchild
S/o Smt Adishree Gopal & Shri K.S. Gopalakrishna
Venue: Sheshadri Mansion, #11 Wadiyar Street,
Rudrapura, Shivamogga Taluk, Karnataka
Time: 9.00 a.m.
Date: 7 June 1994
With Best Compliments:
Smt. Lalita Jagannatha
Smt. Radhika & Shri K.J. Subhramanya
Smt. Savithri & Shri K.J. Srinivasa
Smt. Chitra & Shri K.J. Parthasarathy
Smt. S. Lakshmi
Even though the invitation card was addressed to ‘Mr and Mrs’, Anthony made Tessie stay home, and attended the function at Sheshadri Mansion by himself. Tessie had been unusually tired for some days now. She had recently been diagnosed with a weak heart, which surprised Anthony, for he had always thought that her heart was the strongest thing about his Tessie. He worried about her constantly, and did everything he could to keep her comfortable.
Anthony was almost completely grey now, with only a few stray strands of black left among the snowy curls. His stoop was more pronounced and the lines on his face resembled the cracks that appear on a riverbed run dry. In his gnarled hand was an envelope with some money in it, to be given to Gopala and his wife Adishree for their little one, when his turn came to congratulate them. Anthony made his way slowly to Wadiyar Street where Sheshadri Saab’s two-storey bungalow towered regally above the other houses in the lane.