Sachdev hurled the most vulgar abuses from the bathroom like a sailor, his words pushing his wife to scurry into the bathroom and frantically plucking their four daughters' hair from the drain. The hair was as stubborn as Sachdev, wrapped tightly around the holes of the drain like the chords of an instrument. Sachdev kicked the bottom of his wife as she pulled haphazardly at the hair, screaming more from the panic than the pain. The daughters rushed to the bathroom and before they could pick their mother lying prostrate and crying against the bathroom floor, Sachdev grabbed the long and lustrous hair of the nearest and banged her head against the wall.

There was no gasp, no yelp of surprise from the daughters who were held by their hair and their heads banged against the wall and the floor like coconuts. Sachdev was growing weaker with age so it hurt them less, but he lost his temper quicker. His hatred for hair showed in multiple ways, whether it was finding one stray strand in his food or stepping on a hairpin, he would beat the women up till some even lost their tooth. When the hair of the youngest was infested with lice, he had confined her outside in the courtyard. For two weeks, she sat under the scorching sun as her mother and sisters picked and killed lice.

Sachdev's daughters had hair that most would be envious of, the kind of hair in which the rays of the sun would play peak-a-boo and burn the black to a bright amber. Their grandmother had oiled and pleated their hair since childhood till she passed away, now the daughters who were of marriagable age had hair that would put shampoo advertisements to shame. Sachdev would force them to tie their hair that would otherwise be loose and sway in the wind, catching the attention of both young and old men. He had never wanted daughters, he had tried hard for sons like him who were strong and spent more time building their muscles than combing their hair.

A new course of anger surged within him when he glanced at his wife who carried a useless womb and cried on the bathroom floor. Grabbing the mop, he started hitting her with the sharp edge that pierced her stomach. A wail tore through the house as her blood spilled out, but before he could dare to kill her, he found his wrinkly neck pulled back. Confused, his hands touched his neck and felt soft hair strangling him like a noose.

His heart started beating wildly, more from the shock at the daughters who cried like soldiers in a war, pulling tighter till he felt his breath knocked out of his body. Before he could free himself, he saw his meek, little wife get up with the mop in her hand and holding it like a trishul, she rushed forward. The weak man lost his consciousness before the mop could even touch his fat belly, collapsing on the bathroom floor and lying lifeless like another fallen curl of hair to be flushed.