Weirdness

by Vani Viswanathan

[box]They say things change with time. Somehow, this person’s distinguishing feature – his hairstyle hasn’t. A byte-sized story by Vani Viswanathan.[/box]

He ran his hand through his hair. The whole mass of it: the now-grey, frizzled, coir-like, standing-up mass of it. The parts closer to his scalp were wet with sweat; he switched the fan on, and the top ends began to move about in confusion, some to the left, some to the right, some just squiggling where they were.

It was weird – for all the hair on his head, his face was clean-shaven, and it always was. Even a bit of stubble was to be removed immediately, and his procedure was a daily shave and a monthly trim. Just a trim, never much of a haircut.  The same hairstylist, who was growing old and wasn’t as good as he used to be; he dreaded the effort that would be needed to find a replacement. Someone who knew how to use his scissors was needed; the hair needed to stay the same, the right length, circumference, and all that. The whole mass of it.

It was weird – he had looked the same for the last 30 years. It had started in a fit, the zeitgeist of 30 years ago in the West. The look that fit the bell bottoms, checked shirts with the top few buttons undone, revealing chest hair, and the oversized shades. He was one of the few in the country who had dared to do this – in a country where actors then insisted on a wig of shiny, curly black hair even when they had gone bald, in a country where people wouldn’t look at an actor who didn’t have at least a pencil-drawn moustache. Perhaps that was what actually set him apart and made people come to watch him perform. Unique. Zeitgeist. Of a different country.

 

It was weird – people still identified him because of the hair. When he’d tried 20 years ago to change the haircut, in line with the long punk that most popular men in the West had come to have by then, it backfired terribly, and sales of his records and cassettes fell. It was a painful period, when he had to spend a few months overseas to let his hair grow out. When he returned with the black coir-dry frizz bomb, and there was a photograph of him in the national newspaper, life returned to normalcy. The next album went by without a hitch. Was played on radio a record number of times, in fact. With the decades that came later on, he knew better than to experiment with his mane. Life changed, he didn’t sing anymore, he was making music for movies, and he was still popular and well sought after. And the first thing anyone he met looked at was the hair. The whole mass of it. Like a scan from his forehead to the strand that was straight above the tip of his nose, the longest strand of hair on his head that was gelled well enough to stand up straight in attention. It was almost as if the world believed his magic was in his hair. As if the musical notes would slide down his brains as the strands of hair slid down the white sheet at the stylist’s.

It was weird – he couldn’t fathom the best way to wear it. Even though at the store the attendants fawning over him agreed it was a good purchase. He reached out to pick up the Nike hair band he’d bought. White, and elastic, the kind he’d seen old people like him wore to match their white tee-shirts, shorts, shoes and socks when they jogged. It didn’t look good worn across the forehead, he looked daft. He couldn’t wear it like how girls wore a hair band – because girls wore it that way, and it ruined the hair anyway. He threw the band down in disgust. It was another victim of impulse. Like the decision that was now the hair on his head. The whole mass of it.

Vani Viswanathan is often lost in her world of books and A R Rahman, churning out lines in her head or humming a song. Her world is one of frivolity, optimism, quietude and general chilled-ness, where there is always place for outbursts of laughter, bouts of silence, chocolate, ice cream and lots of books and endless iTunes playlists from all over the world. Vani was a Public Relations consultant in Singapore and decided enough is enough with the struggle to find veggie food everyday, and returned to India after seven long years away. Vani blogs at http://chennaigalwrites.blogspot.com

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