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“Tejas, hurry up!” shouted bhabhi.
“Coming,” I shouted from inside the loo.
“Even girls don’t take that long to get read. What’s taking you so long?”
“Just a minute!”

I looked one last time in the mirror. And see my hair one lat time with my hand. Boys like me don’t fancy combs. I should have had a hair cut last week, I thought, when mother was after my life and had threatened to chop my mop while I was sleep. I had wisely slept with my door bolted for the entire week. How I wished I had listened to her; for once she was right.

She is always too finicky about my hair and length and if she has her way, she will soak my hair in a gallon of oil and then comb them back, firmly adhered to my scalp, and then proudly announce me as her ‘babu beta’ or in simple terms her innocent, smart and ideal son. A typical Indian mother. An I, who have grown up admiring the dishevelled mane of Paul McCartney and co., naturally suffer irreconcilable differences with her on all hair related subjects, which have threatened to disturb the peace of our home, time after time.

But, today there was no doubt about it. She was right. Blessed are the soul who say ‘listen to your mother’, I thought. The more I looked, the more I felt like Conan, the famous barbarian. Anyways, I gave up shaping the superfluous mass into something remotely civilized. As dad says, one has to do the best with what one has. I gave one last fleeting glance at the other parts of my face which I had forgotten in the wake of the hair crisis. I had three pimples on my nose. Bloody hell! Hardly the sort of thing that cheers an already blighted soul. What a birthday gift that was! I was wondering at the injustice of God, when, again, shouts came from everywhere. I shot out of the bathroom that very instant.