Learning linear algebra, courtesy the local salon

It's a truism from my childhood and adolescence: Many schoolboys did not have girlfriends because their parents selected their barber.

- Abhishek Asthana

It's a truism from my childhood and adolescence: Many schoolboys did not have girlfriends because their parents selected 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 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 maximizers who want our curries to be medium spicy and our golgappas to have both the red and green water. This middle-class trait of trying out two options at the price of one has been burnt into us.

And here I was with my medium haircut, traveling to my hometown to pick up my parents for a visit to the Maha Kumbh. As I landed and touched my mother's feet, she noticed that my full head of hair was breaching the periphery of my ears. "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 in one or two business days. I was forced to go the same day.