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There was no lather as I took a blob to wash my hair. Scrub-scrub-scrub. Nothing. I tried with another blob, then another. I decided to look at it closely through eyes that might burn. It wasn’t the shampoo. It was the conditioner. How was I to know? Both the bottles came as Siamese twins; they looked alike. I finally got the lather going over hair that had been flattened by too much care. As I tried untangling the knots, like meaningless relationships each strand stayed stuck. Hair is not so different from people.

This reminds me of my absent-mindedness.

I have taken wrong medicines, forgotten to change my shoes when stepping out, have walked out with laundry labels on clothes…sat in the wrong car…yes…the funny thing is except for the colour, nothing else about the car was the same.

Once, during a family wedding, there had been a small accident and the car had swerved. A few goons decided this was an opportunity to blackmail us. A relative who was with me asked me to quickly remove the jewellery as she had done; I did and stretched my hand out to give it to those guys. She pushed it away, “Don’t be stupid, I asked you to remove it so it is safe in your purse!”

Well, I don’t know if there is any virtue in all this except that I have spoken with ‘wrong numbers’ for 15 minutes, often thinking they are someone I know.

An incident that happened a while ago is worth recounting. We had gone for a film. It was raining and by the time we got there, the movie had begun. I brought out the crumpled tickets from my wallet. The doorman looked at it and asked, “What film’s tickets are these?”

I mentioned the name. “Today’s show, this show.”

“This is the ticket for January 24…” (We were in June.)

How could it be? I looked in my purse again and found the other crispy light blue tickets, the valid ones. Why had I retained those old yellow tickets? The date does not seem significant. I cannot even recollect what film the other one was…perhaps it was just there, like so many things in my life.

On the way out I did something uncharacteristic. I don’t ever throw things on the road, but I took out both the blue and yellow tickets, scrunched them in my palms, dropped them on the ground and then I stamped on them. The streets were wet and parts water-logged. The tickets swam away. The bottoms of my trousers got even soggier.

My feet had ended up hitting nothing at all.