Friend turned Foe : The Treacherous Ceiling Fan

Along the journey called life, I have had my share of friends and foes as I’m sure you have, too. Some friends, over time, become foes and vice versa. It’s a part of the grand cycle, we accept it as our reality and learn to deal with it…

You would however think that such emotions are reserved for living beings, that it is not possible to feel strongly one way or another about inanimate objects. Before making up your mind however, I urge you to listen to a story about me and a device. A device which used to invoke pretty cordial emotions in me, but which I nowadays view with an extreme degree of hostility and even trepidation.

 

I am talking about the ceiling fan. Or indeed, any fan for that matter.

 

In my younger days, where air conditioners used to be the marker for luxurious living much as owning a Lambhorgini is today, the ceiling fan gave me many moments to savour. I still remember the bliss of returning from a cricket match in the scorching Chennai heat and plonking down under the ceiling fan. Or the thrill of using a ball point pen through the grill to manually start the fan in the train compartment. Or jostling for the seats directly under the fan during general class in school. I wouldn’t be going too far in saying that the fan had always been a life saver. 

 

One would have thought that over time, with A/Cs being quite prevalent, both the need for fans and the emotions they provoke would have moderated. Which was the case with me as well for a while. Of late though, fans are intruding into my life in a very nasty, unwholesome manner and causing substantial distress. 

 

Here’s the thing. Whenever man sets out to create anything, there are always ramifications. While the primary purpose of a fan is to circulate air in the room and cool the skin, which are both noble objectives, the process inevitably involves forcefully blowing a fair amount of air in different directions. Now we come to the nub of the issue… 

 

Till a point in one’s life, one’s hair tends to withstand a certain amount of disturbance. Simply because there is enough of it. Hell, wind ruffled hair after a bike ride even used to be a thing in my younger days. However, with the irrevocable coupling between between advancing age and receding hairlines, the sheer quantum of hair on one’s scalp tends to be a very natural casualty. Now, to drive the point home through an analogy, picture a strong banyan tree with lots of branches and leaves, proudly holding its ground in a storm and then a small, frail plant trembling under the onslaught of the same storm. The banyan tree carries on through life post-storm with scarce a stutter, while the small plant will need to go through the process of rebuilding its tender structure…

 

And so it has come to be for me! Just creating order in my hair is complex given it is nowadays a weakly held edifice with poor support structures; support which had been earlier provided through sheer strength in numbers, much like how stability is achieved in a jam packed Mumbai local train. So now, every time I pass under a fan, I need to hold out my hands protectively around the contours of my hairlines to prevent mayhem in the painstakingly established arrangement atop my scalp. And whenever my hands are unable to rise to the task of self-defense, utter and complete disorder is the usual outcome. The good old days of just running my fingers through and smoothing my hair are a distant memory. So now the entire formation has to be reconstructed from the beginning. I used to smirk with contempt at people who carried around a small comb in the back of their trousers in the 80s. Such a filmi thing to do, I thought then. Now of course, I feel like I’m some poster boy for Karma… 

 

Obviously, while the ceiling fan is the principal target of my ire, causing similar aggravation are all forms of the appliance fraternity that blow air with some degree of force. So much so, till a while back, the one thing I used to hate most was the painful security check process at the airport. Not anymore. Now I am petrified of the air curtain when I enter the terminal building. This is an evil device that blows a vigorous jet of compressed air directed from upwards and designed to land precisely on your scalp, from which there is no escape. And since I’ll normally be carrying some luggage, my hands will not be able to rise to protect the carefully constructed house of cards. Result, ruination! I can actually understand how embarrassed and exposed the Red Sea would have felt when Moses parted its waters without consent or warning, laying bare its naked seabed…

 

Hell, recently, there was a group photo being taken during a reunion. Technology having arrived at the advanced station it has, apart from a human being with a camera desperately exhorting us to say Cheese, there was a drone that was flying perilously close to us as it took candid pics from all kinds of angles. And soon enough the cry “Dai, Mudi Parakuthu daaaa…” (“My hair is flying!”) rung the air from multiple corners with the blades of the drone, rotating at a furious RPM, leaving destruction in its wake…

 

The lesson has been internalized to the extent that, while taking a helicopter ride had always been on my bucket list, I recently had to regretfully scratch it! Those rotor blades are so damn powerful, they may not just rearrange the hair, but may actually uproot and create irreparable damage…

 

I have observed there is something about thinning hair and the pathway to baldness that evokes scorn in the fairer sex, who seem to have got off lightly in this department. Nature, which has burdened the female of the species with menstruation, child bearing, unreliable domestic help and various other constraints has, in one fell swoop, over compensated through accelerated hair loss of the male! 

 

It's bad enough that you are forced to face this gradual erosion on a daily basis when you stare into the mirror. However, even close friends seem to feel like they are under some fraternal obligation to bring to your attention the fact that you’ve lost hair since they last saw you. Same with my hairdresser. Each visit leaves him more visibly shocked at the ravages wrought by time on my scalp. He recovers quickly though, and indulges in some aimless conversation that drags out the session, but I am conscious that the mix of work and talk is significantly veering towards less work and more talk with each passing visit. One of these days I am going to renegotiate the rate for my haircut which increasingly seems to consist of randomly snipping the scissors in the air and talking about the world hunger problem…  

 

I even considered shaving my scalp and going bald. I’m told it has some advantages. Ostensibly, you take the hair out of the mix. Very specious reasoning, though. For someone who faces up to the chore of shaving one’s face with resentment, I think dealing with stubble on the scalp is a whole other level of aggravation!

 

Anyway, at this stage of life, we men are children of a lesser god and we are reconciled to it. Just so you know, we are not looking for sympathy, we just want to be understood. The next time you see us weaving a circuitous path from point A to point B, don’t immediately assume the worst and jump to the conclusion that we’ve downed one too many or are trying to achieve proximity with some hot looking thing through the detour. We may just be charting a path that doesn’t put us in harm’s way from some sinister appliance that’s spouting out a gust of air…

 

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