In America I found a programmed people. Every detail of their body movements, their thought processes, mapped out, charted by
marketing surveys. Every want and desire scientifically studied so it could be heightened. What defence does the human being have against this? To be eccentric. The slums of Mumbai are populated by eccentrics. Like Girish, who my friend Yuvraj takes me to meet in Jogeshwari.

I speak to him in his parents’ house, the front room of their shack, in the midst of his neighbours who come and go from the room, watching TV. Girish is in his mid-twenties, a small man albeit with a fine moustache. In
college, where he met Yuvraj, he kept his hair very long. But it was not for fashion. “The weight of your hair on the different parts of your head has an effect on the way your brain functions. Now all these people keep their hair in incorrect ways; they cut it this way and that. When I had my hair long I could concentrate.” But his family was unconvinced of the positive effects on the brain of his long hair. They threatened to cut it off while he slept. So he went off himself to get it cut short.