Loss of Vanity

K V R K Bhargav

A trip to the temple town of Tirupati is always invigorating and spiritually elevating. One uneasy point in this spiritual odyssey was the concept of tonsuring the head. This was something which I was never comfortable with. How will I look? What people will comment seeing me? I survived a scare, narrowly escaping this ordeal last time when I visited this holy place. Few of my friends were very excited to offer their hair to Lord Venkateshwara and asked me, "Are you joining us?" I gave a reluctant 'no' and tried to explain, "You guys might have some 'mokku' to fulfill, I don't have anything like that." One of my friends quickly quipped, "No mokku, just want to feel my head without hair and want to post it as a special update on the facebook."

Mokku is a promise given to the lord to offer him something, in some cases hair, in return for a favour received from him. The visit to the abode of seven hills always left a small uneasy question in my mind- Why this reluctance in shaving my head? Google bhagawan gave me some interesting and insightful answers. One particular answer amazed me- Hair adds beauty to one's personality and enhances vanity. Giving up hair is like letting go your ego and attachment to it which I am sure all know is not easy.

I liked this explanation but with a lot of internal tussle was getting ready for it in the next trip to the seven hills. An opportunity came knocking at my door to visit Tirupati again. I announced my intention to tonsure my head. All sorts of queries and cautious advices followed, "Why, do you have any mokku? Think about it, you will look like Shakal - the villain in  Bollywood film Shaan. Another friend interrupted to say, be careful, more often than not hair doesn't grow as you expect, you  do it at a great risk. One more friendly advice, “Don't come back for one month till you grow some decent hair."

In the wee hours of a winter morning, we set out on foot to the abode of Venkateshwara through the Sri Vari Meetu pathway and reached there when the sun was young. My stomach was churning and my mind was agitating to the thought of tonsure as if  I was losing something precious. I tried to pacify my uneasy mind, "What is there, it is not painful, moreover the ordeal will be over in a few minutes?" I asked a couple of passers by for the route to Kalyana katta-the tonsuring center. I clearly heard my heart thump beneath my chest. I had visited this temple town umpteen number of times, but this visit was different. On that D day, my attention was only on those glittering tonsured heads and the expressions on the faces of the natives.  Theirs was a gamut of emotions from wonder, disbelief, relief, consternation to reverence when they reluctantly peeped into the glass panes of a shop, tinted glass of a car window, a rear view mirror of a vehicle or a small pocket mirror.

My turn came sooner than expected. I was ushered in, into this assembly line where devotees standing in a neatly formed queues renting the air with chants of Govinda. Govinda. They were going in with full hair and were coming out with clean, shaven and shining heads. I was supplied with one half of the traditional shaving blade and I sincerely followed the line and sat in one corner silently entrusting my head to a barber (or a saint) ready with his act of removing my ego. He grinned at me, which seemed like a devilish smirk, removed the wrapper of this half blade, put it in the razor popularly known as ustra before he got down to business. The head was wetted gently with lukewarm water readying it for this holy sacrifice. In little over two minutes with the deft strokes of his razor he accomplished the task. It was a really close shave by this half blade wonder outperforming all the twin blades and triple blades extant in the market. I realized one thing that day- a haircut takes around half an hour to forty five minutes because it is done very carefully keeping in mind how one looks but tonsuring is a simple no frills affair taking just two minutes. The property that I considered my own for more than three decades and half got detached from me in a trice. Is it teaching any lesson? Am I ready to learn? Hmm..bolstering the ego takes a lot of time but reducing it takes no time.

I came out and tried to see the expressions on the faces of people around me. Shutter-bugs started clicking and one of the enthusiasts showed me my apparent egoless existence. I got a mixed bag of responses- 'You look like a disciple of Adi Shankara, look like one of those of Madhava cult, look like one of those notorious Bollywood villains and so on.

But it was a relief of sorts and a sense of achievement as this was not a two minutes ordeal but something which was going on in my mind for many weeks. Quickly one of the members of the entourage got a cap to put it on my head saying, "It looks odd put it till the hair grows to a decent length." I didn't want to sabotage this new found freedom, declined the offer and said," The whole exercise was undertaken to be indifferent to how I look. Let it be natural." But this sense of achievement was short-lived.

One elderly devotee back in Puttaparthi commented seeing my head, "Swami once said seeing a shaven head returning from Tirupati with a chuckle “They shave because they know that hair will grow again, if they come to know that it will never grow, who will offer hair to Venkateswara?”  Bhagawan always raises the bar just when you think you have achieved something!