It’s a truism from my childhood and adolescence: Many schoolboys did not have a girlfriend because their parents decided their barber. The brief was simple, make the child look as unattractive to the opposite sex as possible, so that the only option left was to learn linear algebra, go to college, and eventually succumb to an arranged marriage.

Even when you are old enough to earn your bread and pay for your haircut, the childhood trauma ensures you don’t really know how to brief the hairdresser. Like all of your choices in life, where you have played safe, tried to get the best of both worlds, be it your food or your haircut, when the barber asks “How should I cut it?” , you say, “Medium”.

I am that guy. We are the value maximisers, the guys who want their curries to be medium spicy, their golgappas to have both the red and green water, and their fresh lime soda “sweet and salt”. This middle-class trait has been burnt into us, the urge to try out two options at the price of one.

And here I was with my medium haircut, traveling to my hometown, to pick my parents for a visit to the Maha Kumbh. As I landed, touched my mother’s feet, she immediately noticed that my full head of hair was breaching the periphery of my ears. It was an emergency.

“What will the relatives think when they see you?” She turned to my father, “Please take him to Vinod (the local barber)”.

I intervened quickly, out of PTSD, and promised to visit Vinod the barber in one or two........

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