Dear Sir/Madam,

Snip, snip, snip, go the scissors and bits of my hair fall (the best kind of hair fall there is.) I relax and close my eyes. Will this end well or will I look like Raggedy Ann? I don’t know, but I am content to leave it to fate, and the hairdresser. The lady in the next seat, with her hair in a made-of-dye-cap, smiles at me. Snip,snip,snip…every haircut is a calendar, measuring out the time in the length of my hair. Short hair has been a great thing for me; I learnt how to swim, I didn’t have to put up sweaty hair in a perpetual bun….with a light heart, and a lighter head, I walk home. Snip, snip, snip…a half hour more out of my life, but gone in serenity and peace.

One of the things that interest me very much is the wonderful colours of the buses that ply on our roads….the mofussil (sub-urban) buses, and those that connect the various towns of our State.

This morning’s walk back home: Women dotting freshly-washed front yards with rangoli in the making. The carpets of Honge, Copper Pod, and mahogany flowers on the roads. The smell of onion cooking as a lady makes morning palya at a mobile cart. Walkers with their morning filter kaapi, exchanging notes and spreading newspapers. Sunlight filtering through the trees, haloing the head of an old man as he walks with difficulty but determination. No school buses or sleepy-faced students. Milk packets and newspapers on mopeds,being distributed. A young girl stopping for a minute in front of a small shrine, her eyes closed over her hands folded in prayer. Cut watermelons making red stars. I reach my home, content, looking up at our resident bulbuls as their burbling song pours liquidly over the lawn.

Having seen for myself the deteriorating quality of food on trains on the Indian Railways, I watched this interesting documentary on IRCTC: