The Battle for the Tresses!...

Overcome by grief, misery and sheer sorrow, I surprisingly fumble for the keys on my keyboard as the eligy keeps resounding in my eardrums. Visions of oneself in the mirror is uplifting to most normal civilized mortals, yet today every time I look at myself in the mirror, I feel like I'm staring at Medusa and death swallowing me whole seems to be a lot more delightfully satisfactory. The change is unequivocally apparent, too prominent to warrant omission and too cruciating for my delicate soul to digest. The damage has been done, and whether striking compensation and metamorphosis to indemnify the loss will occur, only time can tell. After five and a half months of fierce war, raging battles and conversational hostilites, my parents finally persuade me, or rather horsepower me into losing my darling honeybunch tresses, my treasured possession, the love of my life, the essence of my soul, and now - Gone! Gone with the wind, gone for eternity, either swallowed by the vast emptiness of Onyx recycling plants, or manifested itself in the depths of the plastic bin outside the salon!

Ouch! It Hurt! As the sparkling aluminium scissor blades went 'snip snip' I could literally feel my heart being placed on the platter and a school of vicious piranhas feasting on it with delight, devouring them as if there were no tomorrow, thanking their lucky stars that Christmas had come early - Hallelujah! Being born into an orthodox staunch Iyengar family (And no, you ignorant dorks, Iyengars have nothing to do with Kabbalah. Why, we don't even listen to Madonna!) there are certain mandatory regulations to be upheld. But I guess luck shone in the horizon, my family were not the 'gaga' kind, whipping children with manicured fingernails and electric blue hair-streaks. Yet they were a little skeptical about my sporting eight inch strands of conditioned hair down my face while going for weekly poojas in the temple, and occasionally they raised a feeble complaint but which were drowned by my pitied pleas for its existence. Over a period of time, I guess they learnt to overpower my petitions and with my recent results being a dismal letdown, they grabbed the platinum opportunity to drop the axe. No points for guessing that I had to oblige, and here I am - with stereotype short hair which makes me look like some kind of retarded inter-galactic bounty hunter scanning the ether and being so jobless to grow staggering long hair and then mercilessly slice it off immediately thus making the efforts futile and bland. But lets face it, I liked it unkempt and messy. Well, you have complaints too? Try a wishing well, because I'd turn a deaf ear!

Life is comparison, and having witnessed the wavy slicked back hair seventeen times a day, it makes me feel so weird to stare at myself in the mirror. Even the darned comb runs through my hair so fast, it brings cherished memories that prick my already auburn oven-roasted heart! And the look on my face - No mastercard would ever fit the bill this time! Its priceless! Even the guy at the salon reciprocated my nostalgia as he humbly did his job to perfection and watched me transmogrify into a freak! Such is life people. It gives you pleasures you could drool on and suddenly takes its toll, leaving you stranded, wrecked and swamped by insignificance, making you feel wasted and spiritless, while your shouts for assistance get immobilized by your own melancholy. After this fiasco, I needed no Bodhi tree to stimulate my wisdom! My advice - Don't grow long hair when you feel you might be opposed. But if you want to, well then Fight! Fight till the very end people, because life more or less boils down to Charles Darwin - Survival of the fittest!

- Supermur...