“Whose girl is this?”

When I was very small I had long hair like a girl. In India boys don’t have that long hair – at least at that time it was not allowed. I used to have very long hair, and whenever I used to enter, and the entrance was from the shop…. The house was behind the shop, so to enter I had to pass through the shop. My father was there, his customers were there, and they would say, “Whose girl is this?”

My father would look at me and say, “What to do? He does not listen.” And he felt offended.

I said, “You need not feel offended. I don’t see any problem. If somebody calls me a girl or a boy, that is his business; what difference does it make to me?”

But he was offended that his boy was being called a girl. Just the idea of a boy and girl…. In India when a boy is born, there are gongs and bands and songs, and sweets are distributed in the whole neighborhood. And when a girl is born, nothing happens – nothing. You immediately know that a girl is born because no gongs, no bells, no band, no singing – nothing is happening, no distribution of sweets – that means a girl is born. Nobody will come to ask because it will be offending you: you will have to answer that a girl is born. The father is sitting with his face down… a girl is born.

So he said, “This is strange. I have a boy, and I am suffering from having a girl.” So one day he really became angry because the man who had asked was a very important man; he was the collector of the district. He was sitting in the shop, and he asked, “Whose girl is this? It is strange, the clothes seem to be a boy’s – and with so many pockets and all full of stones?”

My father said, “What to do? He is a boy, he is not a girl. But today I am going to cut his hair – this is enough!” So he came with his scissors and cut my hair. I didn’t say anything to him. I went to the barber’s shop which was just in front of my house and I told him…. He was an opium addict, a very beautiful man, but sometimes he would cut half your mustache and would forget the other half. You would be sitting in his chair, with his cloth around your neck and he was gone, so you would search – where had he gone? It was difficult; nobody knew where he had gone. And with a half mustache, where would you go to search for him? But he was the only one I liked, because it took hours.

He would tell you a thousand and one things, unrelated to anything in the world. I enjoyed it. It is from that man, Nathur – Nathur, that was his name – that I learned how the human mind is. My first acquaintance with the human mind came from him, because he was not a hypocrite. He would say anything that came to his mind; in fact, between his mind and his mouth there was no difference! – he simply spoke whatsoever was in his mind. If he was fighting with somebody in his mind, he would start fighting loudly – and nobody was there. I was the only one who would not ask, “With whom are you fighting?” So he was very happy with me, so happy that he would never charge me for cutting my nails or anything.

That day I went there and I told him – we used to call him “Kaka”, kaka means uncle – “Kaka, if you are in your senses, just shave my whole head.”

He said, “Great.” He was not in his senses. If he had been, he would have refused because in India you shave your head only when your father dies; otherwise it is not shaved. So he had taken a good dose of opium and he shaved my head completely.

I said, “That’s good.”

I went back. My father looked at me and said, “What happened?”

I said, “What is the point? You cut my hair with the scissors; it will grow again. I am finished with that. And Kaka is willing, I have asked him. He said he is willing: ‘Whenever there is no customer you can come and I will shave your head completely, and no question of money.’ So you need not be worried. I am his free customer because nobody listens to him; I am the only person who listens.”

My father said, “But you know perfectly well that now this will create more trouble.”

And immediately one man came and asked, “What happened? Has this boy’s father died?” Without that, nobody.…

Then my father said, “Look! It was better that you were a girl. Now I am dead! You grow your hair as fast as you can. Go to your Kaka, that opium addict, and ask him if he can help somehow; otherwise this is going to create more trouble for me. The whole town will go on coming. You will be moving around the whole city and everybody will think that your father is dead. They will start coming.”

And they did start coming. That was the last time he did anything to me. After that he said, “I am not going to do anything because it leads into more trouble.”

I said, “I had not asked – I simply go on doing my thing. You interfered unnecessarily.”

Osho, From Ignorance to Innocence, Ch 13, Q 1 (excerpt)

Thanks to Bhagawati and Anugyan for excerpt