Long long ago, in a small village called Edamon, when there were no cosmetic revolutions and beauty pageants to come to live in people’s minds, one naughty boy recommended a ground-breaking idea to grow his sisters’ hair long till their buttocks.

It was this - ‘Tie and hang stones on hair and stand in the sunlight’

Not only did he recommend, he even went on and staunchly helped to tie those stones on their hair. Together they stood and looked as if snake-gourds in the village farmyards. (In the farms of Kerala, like exclamation marks, the longish Snake-gourds would lie topsy-turvy and stare at people as if sentenced to be hanged till death. Stones used to be tied on them to grow them lengthy.)

They were later called as 'Snake-gourds. And that naughty boy was my father.

Like tit for tat, today as I see my hair falling one after the other, the same sisters of him have remedies for me. ‘Apply Snake-gourd paste on your hair or try to drink Snake-gourd juice if possible.’

Revenge sustains through generations, what else?