Gagan and the Rajesh Khanna Haircut
Gagan and the Rajesh Khanna Haircut
This is the story of Gagan — not just as the man everyone laughed at, but as the quiet, forgotten soul behind the laughter, whose life slipped between the lines of ledger‑books and clerks’ gossip, like a blot of ink no one ever bothered to correct.
Chapter 1: Entry
This is the story of Gagan, not just the man everyone laughed at, but the walking entertainment channel of the branch, whose life slipped between ledger books and clerks’ gossip like a blot of ink no one ever bothered to correct.
It was the late 1970s in Dubai. The bank smelled of black ink, tired air-conditioning, and Lipton tea carried in by a tea boy who moved with the calm assurance of a man who knew nobody would ever hurry him.
Into this atmosphere walked Gagan every morning, a little late, a little rumpled, and looking like someone had inflated Rajesh Khanna with a bicycle pump.
His hair was his pride: thick, wavy, and gloriously excessive. It didn’t just sit on his head. It followed him, arriving a full two seconds after he turned, as if finishing its own conversation.
Chapter 2: The Man in Motion
Gagan was our clearing clerk. But if you judged him only by the way he walked, you’d think he owned half of Dubai and at least two cinema halls in Bombay.
He moved from counter to counter with a slow, rolling gait, shirt stretched across his stomach like a suspension bridge under polite traffic. A file in one hand, cheques in the other, and a running commentary trailing behind him in a Hindi-Urdu-Dubai mix.
He had a standard set of dialogues for every situation.
“Arrey, yeh clearing mein daalo, kal credit hoga.”
“Arrey, ho jayega.”
Customers relaxed. Auditors nodded. Half the time they didn’t understand him, but the confidence, and the hair, did the job, hypnotising everyone in the vicinity.
Every branch had its characters. The manager who treated the trial balance like scripture. The cashier who counted notes like a magician. The peon who was a walking encyclopedia of everyone’s salaries, increments, and whispered bonuses.
Gagan belonged to none of these categories.
He was something else entirely. He combined the body of a retired wrestler, the hairstyle of a 70s Bollywood hero, and the workload of three normal clerks who conveniently enjoyed prolonged tea breaks together.
Chapter 3: In Tea We Trust
Tea was the second religion of the branch. Banking paid the salary; tea made it worth earning.
The tea boy would appear, tray rattling, announcing “Chai, chai!” like a railway platform.
Gagan reacted to tea the way others reacted to promotions.
His eyes lit up. His hair quivered with anticipation.
“Arrey, chai thandi ho jayegi” was his mantra, as if this was a national emergency.
“Shukriya, Nasir bhai,” as if the tea boy was a gift from God.
He would pour the tea into the saucer first, and then like a circus juggler balance a bundle of cheques in one hand and a saucer of tea in the other without spilling either, a skill no training manual had ever covered.
By afternoon, his in-tray looked like a hill station with piles of paper. His desk was an extension of his personality: overflowing, colourful, and strangely well organised underneath the chaos. There were pens with their caps missing, rubber bands lying about like lazy worms, a time stamping machine that had seen better years, and a calendar permanently stuck on some forgotten month because nobody dared lift the files to turn it. Somehow, from this archaeological site, Gagan could produce any cheque or voucher in under thirty seconds. “Hare, ruk ja, abhi nikalta hoon,” he would say, and like a stage magician he would pull the exact paper out from under a mountain of unrelated files.
The ladies in the bank found him harmless and faintly amusing. He was soft spoken with them, his voice dropping half an octave and his stomach being sucked in, unsuccessfully, whenever one of them came to his counter. “Madam, aapka cheque kal clear ho jayega,” he would say, with the gravity of a surgeon announcing that the operation was a success. They would smile, he would beam, and his hair would do a small victory dance above his forehead.
Chapter 4: The Gym Episode
At some point, nobody could remember exactly when, Gagan decided he needed to get fit. Perhaps it was the shirt button that had finally surrendered one morning, or perhaps it was a glance in the dirty bathroom mirror that told him what the rest of us had known for years. Whatever the reason, the decision was made with characteristic Gagan logic: if one was going to get fit, one must first look the part.
So he went to Meena Bazaar and bought a pair of shorts, cheap because he still haggled, in flashy colours, and clearly not designed for ambition.
He arrived at the gym, changed into his shorts, and immediately felt a surge of confidence.
He surveyed the weights.
Selected one.
Bent down.
And the shorts gave up immediately.
The sound carried.
The shorts surrendered from his waist to his knees like a curtain falling mid-performance.
There stood Gagan, in the middle of a Dubai gym, his Meena Bazaar investment revealing more than intended.
By the next morning, the story had reached the canteen before he had.
Cigarettes were lit and benches were dragged noisily, and someone said:
“Gagan, koi joke suna.”
Gagan walked in, assessed the situation, pushed his stomach out for effect, and said:
“Hare, weight lifting mein yeh bhi hota hai.”
The room collapsed.
The fitness regime did not survive the week.
The story survived for years.
Chapter 5: The Performer
In the canteen, he was unstoppable.
“Gagan, koi joke suna.”
That was all it took.
He became everyone, the angry customer, the confused auditor, the irritated manager.
Including himself.
He would wobble his stomach and say, dead serious:
“Manager saab bolta, ‘Gagan, tu roz late aata hai.’ Main bola, ‘Sir, mera pet jaldi nahi uthta.’”
Tea spilled. Biscuits drowned mid-dip. Even the quiet ones laughed into their cups.
What set him apart was simple: he laughed the loudest. And he meant it.
Chapter 6: The Turn
But there was one episode the canteen did not handle lightly.
And Gagan did not perform for our benefit.
His parents had chosen a wife. He had met her twice before the wedding, once at the viewing, once at the ceremony. Both times, tea was served. She came on an Air India flight, Bombay to Dubai.
Like many in Dubai then, he lived in shared accommodation, crowded flats where the sofas were on rotation, kitchens that always smelled of dal. Privacy was a luxury many Asian workers could not afford.
When he married, his wife joined him in that arrangement. Quietly. Without complaint.
The flat remained full, and so did the relatives. The hours at the bank were long. And somewhere in that crowded space, something happened that should not have.
When it came out, it spread quickly. It always did.
One day, someone made a joke that should have stayed unspoken. Too loud. Too easy. For once, Gagan did not laugh.
He became, for a while, the man who could not hold on to his wife.
Chapter 7: After the Laughter
He still came to work.
The cheques were stamped. The tea was drunk.
“Arrey, ho jayega” was the chorus heard when the auditors looked worried.
But the canteen performances stopped.
The stomach no longer wobbled on command. The canteen had one less voice.
His hair still arrived two seconds before him.
But the man behind it had stepped back into some private place where jokes could not follow.
Chapter 8: Ledger and Memory
You could not stay annoyed with him.
Even after a mistake, he would rub his hair, look genuinely apologetic, and say:
“Hare, galti ho gayi. Ab nahi hoga.”
And somehow, anger dissolved.
Looking back, the ledgers and vouchers were only the official record.
The real story of the branch lived elsewhere, in voices, in tea steam, in laughter that travelled across counters.
Chapter 9: The Last Image
Years passed.
Banks became quieter. Computers arrived. Air-conditioning improved. Laughter gave way to polite smiles.
The Rajesh Khanna haircut disappeared.
But sometimes, in the smell of strong tea and old ink, I still hear it.
“Arrey, chai thandi ho jayegi.”
And I turn.
Half-expecting his hair to arrive first.
And him, just behind it.
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