Comb Over

(This short story was originally published in GQ India as 'The Hatchling'. Illustration by Kunal Kundu)

The funny thing is, I was dreaming about dad when they broke in.

He was young and handsome, stepping from an Ambassador in a white suit and mirrored shades that popped with camera flashes from a cheering and whistling crowd. He ran a gold-ringed hand through his hair and grinned.

I was amazed. All along, my dad had been a movie star and never told me. I struggled through a forest of legs and tugged at his trousers. He looked down.

“Dad!” I cried. “Are you Amitabh Bachchan?”

But when he bent down to me, I could see it was all an act.

“No, Chicky,” he whispered nervously, “I’m not.” He pulled at his hair: a wig. Underneath, he was completely bald. He put a finger to his lips. “But keep it under your hat.”

He stood up again.

“I’m sorry I can’t give you much, Chicky,” he said sadly, patting me on the head. “It’s the price of fame.”

He started walking away. I wanted to follow him but my head hurt so much I couldn’t move.

I watched him walk up some steps to a long table. He removed the thick dark wig like a helmet, lay down and carefully crossed his hands on his chest.

And when he died, everyone cheered.

*          *          *

“Get up, chutiya.”

Two strange men were in my flat.

Sitting on the side of my bed was a skinny, light-eyed rat in a violently yellow shirt, pinching his nose while he watched me. Meanwhile, his partner was going through my wardrobe: a fat, bearded six-foot bear in a long black kurta, blue jeans and chappals. They looked both in their fifties, down on their luck.

I’m not brave, but the dream had left me angry.

“Who the fuck are you and what are you doing in my pad?” I snarled.

The Rat squinted. Metal flashed in his hand: An old cutthroat razor taken from my bathroom. “Want a shave, Chicky?” he said with a nicotine grin. “Very close.”

The Bear started tossing my clothes on to the floor.

“Not expecting visitors, eh?” said Rat, patting my knee with the flat of the razor.  “We will talk while Manuji has a look around. See, your Daddy owes me some money.”

“What are you talking about? My dad’s dead,” I told him. “Cancer got him over 10 years ago.”

“So now you owe me. Forty-nine lakh rupees.”

“What bullshit.”

Rat snapped his fingers. “That’s what my painting is worth,” he snarled. “I bought it for my wife for eight thousand rupees. She sold it back to your daddy two years later for one lakh, the stupid woman. And then what? What then? It sold in New York last year for 50 lakh rupees!”

Bear paused in his search under the bed, distracted by the spectacle of the heartbroken Rat.

“He knew it was worth more,” Rat spat. “Your daddy was a thief.”

New York, last year. He must have been talking about Comb Over, 1999, oil on canvas: a crisscrossed X-ray of the Mumbai cityscape, paint-scratched with combs and hairbrushes. It was one of the few artworks my Dad painted on canvas and one of even fewer he made decent money off. Dad had sold it to a French guy not long before he died for five lakhs. The money all went on chemo and our three-week trip to Hampi.

This Rat, whatever he was, had no idea. I hardly saw any money from Dad’s work. He sold his canvases cheap early on; after that it was all guerilla trompe l’oeil graffiti and stencils.

That was dad’s thing, long before his imitators in the West. He’d sneak off somewhere overnight and spray a scene on urban walls and shopfront shutters: Mama, an overweight cop asleep in a chair; Freewheel, a rickshaw with college kids smoking in the back seat; Dost, two street dogs sniffing each other’s behinds. Outdoor paintings popped up overnight in cities across India, tied off in the corner with the little black knot of his signature: DAB.

They weren’t political statements, not even jokes; just splashes of vivid colour and tender energy: the everyday made effervescent. I still remembered the childhood shock of seeing Off the Top, a roadside barbershop painted on a Goregaon wall. I could hear the snip-snip of the scissors, the whirr of the fan, the radio’s tinny murmur. I'd wanted to reach through that concrete space and turn the volume up.

Now critics call my Dad the “Banksy of the Subcontinent” and “India’s Xavier Prou”. But most of it had been scrubbed off or painted over, and what survived always belonged to someone else. People loved Dad for his work. But they didn’t pay him for it. All I had were photos and memories.

I tried to explain some of this to Rat over the sound of Bear banging his way through the kitchen cupboards.

Rat pinched his nose again, unimpressed. “You have a painting,” he sniffed. “Where is it?”

“No, I don’t,” I said. “But you’re welcome to the cutlery. Real stainless steel.”

There was a quicksilver blur. The Rat had the razor at my ear.

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking me stupid or cowardly,” he said quietly. “There’s a painting by Dab no one knows about. I want it. And unless I get it, you get scalped.”

I held still, my pulse tapping against the edge of the blade.

“I don’t have any of Dad’s work,” I said carefully. “That’s the truth.”

Rat withdrew the razor. “Manuji,” he shouted. “Kuch hai?”

The Bear wandered back into my bedroom holding a frying pan. He shook his head.

“You ought to be careful, Chicky,” said Rat. “Manuji’s brother is a policeman. Last year, he was at Arthur Road Jail and he got to know a tattoo artist there whose cousin had a sketch by your daddy.”

“What sketch?”

“The cousin never said how he came to have it, and now he’s dead. The sketch is worthless anyway. There’s no signature, see? But Manuji and me, we went to Hampi to get it from the cousin’s wife. It’s a sketch for a painting.”

Gently, he picked out an old, delicate slice of paper from his wallet. It opened to show a simple drawing of an egg, cracking zanily, a little yellow beak poking out. It had been folded and unfolded so many times the paper had begun to split. But the drawing had Dad’s lines.

I sighed. Everybody wanted something from Dad, and I had nothing. “So you’re a real art expert,” I said.

“I had the best gallery in Pune,” said Rat sadly. “Until 2008.”

I laughed. “And who’s he?” I said, pointing at Manu. “Fucking Caravaggio?”

“Manuji is an artist in his own way, even with a frying pan.” He put the sketch back in his wallet and stood up. “Where’s the egg, Chicky?”

“I don’t know. Up your ass?” I suggested.

Rat looked at Manu and nodded. Manu smiled, hefting the pan.

*          *          *

My head hurt so much I couldn’t move. I blinked at the bedside clock. I’d been out for two hours.

I got out of bed and drank some water. Rat and Bear were long gone. Calling the police seemed like a bad idea, but figured I ought to see a doctor.

Instead, I kept thinking about Hampi.

Dad had taken me there to say goodbye. He’d had a break in the chemotherapy and was still strong enough to travel. I was only 10 years old. All I knew was that dad was losing his hair because he was sick. I hadn't understood why Dad had got all religious, taking me for mundan when I was so old.

When I got older, I'd thought I figured it out: God gets stronger the closer you are to meeting him. And Mundan was Dad’s way of telling me that chemo was a kind of purification. Shaving my head made us a funny pair: bald-headed daddy and bald-headed Chicky. 

But now I knew that wasn’t it.

The more I thought about it, the more the man doing the mundan didn’t seem like a priest. He’d had a lot of tattoos. He’d taken such a long time to shave my head, and it had hurt. It had hurt so much I cried.

And cutthroat razors don’t buzz.

I picked up the razor and went to the bathroom. After the scissors, it took four blades to scratch away my thick dark rug, coming out an hour later all hairy-fingered, cut and bruised for an urgent top-of-the-head selfie.

It wasn’t exactly the same as the sketch. No shell, just the crazy jagged crack and bright yellow beak. And this one had Dad’s signature, tied like a little black knot.

I began to laugh. I laughed so hard it made me cry. I took a breath and tried to think what to do next.

Dad was right. I really needed a hat.