Gerald D'Cunha

  “There is no fire like passion; there is no shark like hatred; there is no snare like folly; there is no torrent like greed.” Siddharta Gautama   T hese days, there is no need to go to a barber; the barber comes home, you see.  A person like me, who grew up in a village, has been the one who, always, went to a local barber. My brothers and I went to a barber named Keshava… We lived not in a remote village, though. But, I remember the barber at my maternal uncle’s remote village… The house was isolated and miles away from the road… The barber had to come home. The name of uncle Lawrie’s barber was Isara. Uncle would sit in the shade of a nearby tree, and Isara would go about doing a complete job, including uncle’s armpits! It was a sight to behold for excited kids like us. One thing common with the Isara-kind of barbers and the Keshava-kind was this: they had the latest and the most exhaustive update about the village… People, always, went back updated about the ...

  “Dhobi ka kutta na ghar ka, na ghaat ka.” Old proverb W hen my dad, his brothers and sisters wanted to migrate to a big city for a ‘better life’, their obvious choice was Bombay. Back in the village, life was confined to the little paddy fields, one-or-two cows, dogs, cats, chicken… for some, a couple of buffalos… Schooling was mostly limited to primary or higher primary. Rarely someone managed to complete high school (up to 11 th grade in those days.). So, invariably, one of my uncles or aunts, who first migrated to Bombay – and lived in some crowded chawls or bastie s – began to take others to the city, one by one… till all siblings – nine of them - were uprooted from the village. My dad, somehow, made it back to the village before he got married to my mom. There on, he made our village as his permanent dwelling and working place. For those uncles and aunts, who had chosen to stay back in this big city, slowly and steadily, the progress in Bombay meant upgrading their...