Shaving grace

"You look frightening. You should shave." Since it came from a woman I’ve known for three decades, I just shrugged it aside before leaving for the Bangalore airport. Mothers can be cruel. She had another piece of advice, which I will come to later.

"What's the purpose of your visit?" "Cricket" brings a smile and a favourable quick stamp on the passport at the visa counter in Colombo airport. He starts to ask something – my guess it was about Indian cricketers – but, maybe because I’m fat, bearded and generally looking like the kind of person you don't want to introduce your daughter to, the question stopped in his throat. I need to shave. He might have had a pretty daughter.

The information desk tells me the taxi fare to the hotel will cost me 2300 Sri Lankan rupees. That will get me 80 shaves in the hole in the wall back home. I decide to take the bus and bump into Jehan.

"Are you from Punjab?" he asks. I need to shave. "I know Hindi as I work in Dubai and know many Indians. Lots of Kerala people, you know; 70% of the workers. They tend to keep to themselves and don't move around with others much." The airport bus takes us to a depot where Jehan helps me to get another that will take me to Colombo. He even calls up the hotel and finds out I should pay a maximum of 200 rupees as auto fare after I get down from the bus in the city. And, as he leaves, he shakes my hand and says, expansively, "Welcome to Sri Lanka". I bet it's something he always wanted to say. It's something that I have also wanted to say – India, of course, not Sri Lanka– but it comes a distant second after "This is how it all happened," a la Hercule Poirot.

The bus is a rickety van, just like you would find in Indian towns. The curtain has been unwashed for months; the dark-film coating on the window is peeling off at places and in spite of my baggage blocking the narrow aisle, the passengers just hop over the barricade without any complaints. As I push aside the curtain, Aishwarya Rai smiles at me from a hoarding. A little while into the journey, Shahrukh Khan says, "Hello Sri Lanka, it's nice to be here," in a banner for a telecom company, and Mahela Jayawardene tries to sell me a soft drink throughout the journey. The biggest hoarding, though, belongs to Ajantha Mendis, who thrusts a meat ball at me; alas, the middle finger is not bent.

"You a Pakistani?" asks the auto driver, who, like his Indian counterparts, won't settle for anything less than 250 rupees. I really need that shave. "Petrol costly, so auto costly," he explains. As the auto, without any sign of a meter, rolls along the deserted Sunday-evening road punctuated by army patrols, he puts me at ease. "No worry. You can walk in the evenings. Safe. One more week and this (the current military offensive against LTTE) will finish."

I check into a hotel near the President's house and immediately set out to explore the area. A little further away, I spot a small, bustling tea shop. I park myself in a chair, sipping my tea amid dim lights, busy waiters and Tamil film music in the air. An announcer in the lovely Lankan Tamil twang gives details of the next song. Memories of Radio Ceylon and 'Adhutha Padal' flood in. If you want to smoke, go to that room, a boy says, pointing to a cell-like inner room.

"Don't speak in Tamil there. Fight going on … ille?" Those were my mother's final words as I left my home. "Thalaiva, inga shave panre edam enga? (Where can I get a shave here?)," I ask a waiter in Tamil. He warms up and. On learning why I’m here, predicts that Sri Lanka will beat India.

With a smile, I head to Raja Salon, a hole-in-the-wall barber shop. A Sinhalese version of Mind Your Language is playing on the wall-mounted TV and the three barbers in the shop laugh away as they bend over the customers' heads with scissors. A multi-armed goddess sitting on a tiger is framed on the wall and an old wall-clock hung at a rakish angle. Just like in India. But unlike the Indian version, where you would find dated decades-old film magazines with a pouting, teasing Sridevi on the cover and all the dope on the Amitabh-Rekha affair inside, this one had only newspapers and a political magazine.

After getting a thinly trimmed beard that run in sharp lines on my face for 80 rupees, I go back to the tea shop where the boy nods approvingly at my appearance and walk around again for a while before heading back to the hotel around 9.30 pm. It's a budget hotel that I had checked into just for the night but the room is spacious and the bed is huge with three pillows. Who did they think I was, Caligula? The view from the balcony is mesmeric. The sea in all its splendour spreads out to the horizon and the gentle lapping of the waves is really soothing. Shahrukh was right. It's nice to be here in the tear-shaped island. And I promise cricket from the next post.