Don't Let Him Know by Sandip Roy

boys are one way and girls are another. And if you have long hair people will think you are a girl.’
    ‘So what?’
    ‘Well, then you don’t need to study at St John’s School for Boys. Look, I have a hundred things to do. I can’t sit here and argue with you all day. If you don’t want a haircut, don’t. We will put a ribbon in it and enrol you in St Teresa’s like Indrani next door.’
    When Avinash turned seven his exasperated mother announced he was old enough to go and get his hair cut, just as his father did, at the New Modern Saloon for Gents (Air-Conditioned). She thought it would make him feel grown-up and that his passionate hatred for the ritual might dissipate. But it did not help. The New Modern Saloon was neither new nor modern but it was indeed air-conditioned. In fact, before B.C. Sen and Sons Fine Jewellers installed an air conditioner, New Modern Saloon was the only shop in the neighbourhood that boasted of one. More often than not, though, the air conditioner was turned off. ‘Electricity bill too high,’ explained Harish-babu, the head barber.
    Harish-babu, as head barber, reserved his cutting talents for the more exalted customers, like Avinash’s father, a professor and thus automatically held in high regard. Avinash had to be content with Lakshman-babu who was probably ten years younger but seemed ancient anyway. They were an odd pair. Harish-babu was tall and thin with wire-rimmed spectacles and white hair that matched his spotless white shirt and dhoti. On bright summer days he glowed like a detergent advertisement. Lakshman-babu was plump and dark, with caterpillar eyebrows. On hot afternoons Avinash could see the beads of sweat gather like hungry flies on his big bald domed forehead. Avinash would stare at them fascinated, trying to will the drops to grow bigger and heavier and heavier until unable to stop themselves they would roll down his forehead. Lakshman-babu always smiled unctuously at Avinash and said, ‘Well, if it’s not the little sahib. Already time for another haircut, eh?’
    Then he placed two cushions on the chair so that Avinash’s head would come up to the level of his scissors.
    ‘My, my, you are growing. Soon you’ll be needing only one cushion. Ha ha ha.’
    Scowling fiercely, Avinash would clamber on to the footstool and then on to the chair and plant himself on the cushions. The chair was big and wide and Avinash always felt he was being swallowed whole.
    ‘Very good, very good,’ Lakshman-babu chortled as he wrapped a starched white sheet around him and knotted it tightly behind Avinash’s neck. He made a few practice swipes with his scissors. Then his big shiny moon-head loomed over his ear.
    ‘Hold still now, my little gentleman,’ he said, the fingers of his left hand brutally digging into Avinash’s neck and jamming his head in place. ‘We don’t want to cut off a bit of our ears now, do we?’
    Avinash bet he did. Avinash bet he kept the ears of young boys in jars. He had once seen a whole baby with three legs in a big jar at the museum. Avinash imagined his ear floating in a jar like that.
    By the end of the haircut Avinash had hair all over him and inside his shirt and it tickled and scratched. But the torture was not over yet. One final ritual was left. Lakshman-babu opened his shiny blue powder case, dabbed the pale pink worn-out powder puff vigorously in the cheap talcum powder and then daubed it liberally on Avinash’s neck raising puffy white clouds. Finally satisfied with Avinash’s parted, powdered and tamed look, he pushed the stool forward so Avinash could clamber down to freedom.
    Over time the stepping stool went away and then one by one the cushions too but Avinash’s hatred for Lakshman-babu and his haircuts remained undiminished. His stalling attempts at rebellion, however, always came to nothing, thanks to Father Rozario.
    Father Rozario was the school prefect. Every now and then, with no warning, he would announce hair-check