Don't Let Him Know by Sandip Roy Page A

shirt all wrong.’ Avinash just nodded and bolted from the store. ‘Come back again,’ Sultan called after him.
    Avinash turned around. Sultan was standing at the door lighting a cigarette and looking at him. As their eyes met he smiled, and Avinash was not sure if he had imagined everything.
    That night Avinash dreamt of him but he was in the old shop and then his mother was scolding him and Avinash woke up trembling with fear and guilt. But when he closed his eyes he saw him again standing at the door looking at him and smiling. And Avinash wondered what would happen if he just walked back, past the newspaper store, past the tea-stall, past the sleeping dog, up the two steps and Sultan shut the door behind him.
    A few days later as Avinash was walking down the street he saw Sultan sitting on the steps in front of his shop. He was smoking a cigarette and chatting with the man who sold newspapers and magazines in the little stall down the road. Sultan saw him and grinned and waved, wispy tendrils of smoke curling up from his fingers. Caught in his grin, like an animal in the headlights of a car, Avinash suddenly knew he could not walk past him without remembering his dream and the strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. He stopped short and pretended he had just remembered something on the other side of the road. He turned and ran across the road almost knocking over a boy on a bicycle going the wrong way. The boy teetered down the street, a few choice curses wafting in his wake like Sultan’s cigarette smoke.
    Once safely on the other side, Avinash looked across the street to see if Sultan had noticed his flight, if he was looking to see where Avinash had run off to. But he had gone back to his conversation. Avinash saw him toss his head back and laugh, his teeth white against his tan. He ran his fingers through his hair and Avinash shivered uncontrollably. He stood there for a couple of minutes trying to will him to turn and seek him out. But he carried on unconcerned, as if he had forgotten how their paths had almost intersected, before Avinash ran away. Then he finished his cigarette and stubbed it out with his sandal, stood up, stretched and wandered back inside his shop.
     
    Avinash never went back to get his hair cut at Sultan’s again. One day he noticed the Badshah saloon had gone out of business. When Avinash got married and had a son, Amit got into St John’s School as well. ‘Like father, like son,’ Avinash’s mother said with a proud smile. Father Rozario was still there, as were hair-check days, but these were different times and no one got caned for long hair any more. Instead, they were fined.
    Unlike Badshah, the New Modern Saloon for Gents (Air-Conditioned) survived. But Avinash refused to take Amit there for his haircuts. Harish-babu had died and Lakshman-babu was now in charge. Avinash took Amit to a far more expensive saloon even though it was much further away, something the boy’s grandmother thought of as a ridiculous indulgence bound to spoil the child. Sometimes on lazy holiday afternoons she would tell her grandson the story of how his father hated having his hair cut. The story was part of family lore now, worn into familiarity by its telling, rendered perfectly harmless, even slightly boring.

V
    Great-Grandmother’s Mango Chutney
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    Two weeks after Amit was dumped by his first serious American girlfriend, he was suddenly stricken by an urge for homemade mango chutney. The memory, sweet and tart at the same time, tugged at him so insistently that he got into his run-down old Honda hatchback, drove down to Valencia Street, past the taquerias with their mariachi bands, the second-hand bookstores and the newly sprung chic tapas restaurants, until he found the only Indian grocery store in the neighbourhood. As he stood in the store deliberating over the bottles of Pataks and Priyas while a tinny song from the latest Bollywood blockbuster wafted through the aisles, he noticed a