I've always hated my friend's hair. It's everything mine is not: thick, collyrium black, produced in the miraculous Kerala backwaters that give their women manes so abundant they seem to have been touched by the God of Big Hair.
In all the years I have known her, it has been a lush bob, a desi Bebe Daniels, maintained with the help of the friendly neighbourhood beauty parlour. Her low moods had little to do with the waxing and waning of the moon. They had everything to do with her hair-colouring appointments, after which she would emerge coiffured like a Hollywood retro star, her spirits restored by a blow-dry.
