Rohan to Rohini (A Feel-Good Story)

Chapter 3: The Clip

By the third month, I was always tucking my hair behind my ears. It never stayed. I liked that, except when it fell in front of my eyes while I was reading.

One evening, I was rolling rotis, and my hair kept falling forward. I kept pushing it back with my wrist. Ananya saw me.

“Wait. Your hands are full of flour. And your cheeks too.”

She reached up to her own hair and pulled out two thin black bobby pins. A bit of her hair fell loose, and she didn’t care. She held the pins up. “Can I?”

I looked at them. A second ago they had been in her hair. Such small things. I had seen hundreds of them in our house: on her dressing table, on the bathroom shelf, lost under the sofa. I had never once thought of wearing one.

I bent my head.

She pushed my hair back from my face, first on the left side and then on the right, and slid one pin in above each temple. I felt them press against my head, thin and a little cold. Nothing fell in front of my eyes now. My whole face was open. She smiled, and then she went back to the dal, as if nothing had happened.

I stood very still. My hands were still covered in flour. Slowly, I turned towards the dark kitchen window.

Someone softer looked back at me.

It was still my face. But with my hair pinned back like that, it looked gentler. I couldn’t stop looking. It was the first time in my life I was wearing something made for a girl. Just two small black pins. But my heart was beating so loudly that I was sure Ananya could hear it.

“Does it look okay?” My voice came out smaller than I wanted.

Ananya looked at me properly. “It looks nice.” Then she looked down. “But your roti is starting to look like a map.”

I laughed, and something tight inside me let go. I went back to the rotis, but between each one, I looked up at the window again.

When I finished, Ananya said, “Now go and wash the flour off your cheeks. And look at your beautiful hairstyle in the mirror, not in the kitchen window.” She smiled.

Beautiful. I didn’t say anything, but I heard it.

I washed my face at the washbasin and looked up.

In the kitchen window, I had only seen a dark shape of myself. Here, under the bright light, I could see everything. I came closer to the mirror. The two black pins sat above my temples, holding my hair back. On top, the hair made a soft wave before it went back, a wave I had never seen on my own head. I touched it with one finger, very lightly, as if it might break. My face looked open. My eyes looked bigger.

I turned my head to the left, then to the right. I didn’t want to stop looking.

Then I heard the gate. Mummy was home.

My hands moved before I could think. I pulled out both pins and pushed them into my pocket. I shook my hair loose with my fingers. By the time she came in, I was back in the kitchen, putting the rotis in the box.

At dinner, I could feel the two pins in my pocket the whole time. I felt a little guilty, and I didn’t know why. I hadn’t done anything wrong.

Before bed, I went to Ananya’s room to give them back. She was sitting on her bed with her laptop. She looked at the two pins in my open hand, and then at me. She didn’t ask why my hair was loose again.

“Keep them,” she said. “I have so many. They disappear anyway.”

I closed my hand around them.

In my room, I put the pins next to my watch. I didn’t sleep for a long time.

On Sunday, I was making rotis again, and Mummy was at the table cutting vegetables. My hair fell forward again. Ananya came into the kitchen and looked at me.

“Where are the pins?”

They were in my pocket. Every morning since that day, I had picked them up from next to my watch and carried them with me. I took them out slowly and gave them to her.

Right there, in front of Mummy, she pushed my hair back and put one pin above each temple, just like before.

“At least keep them in while you’re making rotis,” she said, loud enough for Mummy to hear. “Otherwise we’ll all be eating your hair.”

I waited. My face was hot.

Mummy looked up from the vegetables. She looked at me for a second.

“She’s right,” she said. “Hair in the food is the worst.” And she went back to cutting the beans.

That was it. I rolled the next roti, and the pins stayed where they were.

I didn’t take them out for the rest of the day. Not after the rotis, not after dinner. Only when I was going to sleep.

The next morning, I walked to Ananya’s room with the pins in my hand. She was getting ready for the studio, and she saw me in the mirror.

“Keeping my hair out of my face helps a lot,” I said. “Even at work.”

It was true. It just wasn’t the whole truth.

“Wait,” she said. “I’ll show you.”

She stood behind me and showed me slowly. Hold the hair back with one hand. Open the pin a little with your teeth or your nail. Then she looked at my hands. “You use your teeth,” she said. “Your nails are too short.” Slide it in flat, against your head, not straight in. Then she gave them to me.

My first try fell out. My second try pulled my hair. On the third try, the pin went in and stayed. I did the other side. It took me two tries.

I looked at myself in her mirror. I had done it myself.

Mummy walked past the door, dressed for the bank, with her lunch bag in her hand. She looked in at the two of us standing at the mirror. She didn’t say anything. She just smiled and kept walking.

For the first few days, the pins stayed perfectly. Then, slowly, they started slipping. A little during calls. A little more when I bent over the stove. I found one on my keyboard and one inside the rice tin, and I never found out how it got there. I thought I was doing everything the way she had shown me. I didn’t understand what was going wrong.

About a week later, Ananya came into the kitchen while I was pushing a pin back in for the third time. She held out her hand, and I gave it to her. She pulled the two sides of the pin apart with her finger. They opened too easily.

“You’re opening them too wide with your teeth,” she said. “Every time you pull them apart like that, they get a little looser. Now they can’t hold anything.” Then she smiled. “I did the same thing when I started.”

She put something on the counter next to me.

A small black snap clip.

I picked it up and turned it over. I didn’t even know which way it opened.

“This is better than pins,” she said. “If you want to try. Come here.”

She took it from me, pressed it open with her thumb, pulled the front of my hair to one side, and pressed it shut. Click.

“Press here to open. Press here to close.” She took it out again and put it back in my hand. “Now you.”

My first try closed on nothing. My second try caught only a few hairs, and the clip slid down to my ear. On the third try, I held my hair the way she had, pressed it shut, and heard it. Click.

It stayed.

“See?” she said, and took a piece of cucumber from my chopping board and left.

That night, I put it next to my watch, beside the two pins. Two thin pins and one small black clip. The first things that were really mine.