By Mohammad Ilyas Bhat

During the morning rush on Boulevard Road in Srinagar, a woman swung her car in front of another and forced it to stop. 

She stepped out, seized two young boys and began to slap and kick them while traffic stacked up behind her. 

We pulled over and ran to intervene. She turned on us instead. 

“Please don’t stop me,” she shouted. “These boys have been teasing me ever since Dalgate. They are of the same age as my own children.”

After we helped clear the road, we asked her again to let them go, telling her they had probably learnt the lesson of their lives. She pointed at their unusual hairstyles and earrings. 

Their parents, she thundered, had allowed such haircuts without caring about the company their sons kept. She was taking the boys to the police station so those parents would learn how they behaved. 

Whether she was right to judge them by their appearance is open to debate. The judgment itself interests me more, because I suspect she was applying an old rule: a haircut tells a neighbourhood who raised you.

Our home kept that rule on the first Sunday of the month. 

As the youngest, I went to invite the barber, Wasta Sidiq, who arrived in traditional attire with his simple tools,........

© Kashmir Observer