Toyo is obsessive with his locks. When the appearance of a 'chand' on his head was heralded by the disappearance of his locks, the distressed Toyo rang me up and groaned over his hair-fall. That reminded me of the dreadful days of yore when I had started losing hair. A chum of mine, who had also suffered from the same disease, remitted me to one Hakim Sahib (HS) of whom he first and later I became a regular patient. Spontaneously, I suggested the same HS to Toyo.

So below writes Toyo about his plight and experience of HS in his own fashion.

"Being pushed for money as ever, I threw myself on the mercy of HS recommended to me by my friend.

Note: For the convenience of those who have never visited some HS' dawakhana, there is like magnetic field, a dawakhanic field that perfumes its surroundings and charms every stray pilgrim bound for dawakhana straight into it.

Likewise, I found myself parked in front of it. As the door stood ajar which was indicative of implied permission for admission, I knocked and walked in.

Sparsely equipped and dimly-lit, the dawakhana wore a look peculiar to archaeological excavations. My messiah, clad in the attire typical of a Chinese virgin singing and dancing on the mountains with a smile on her face, pointed out a wooden chair and beckoned me to sit on it. I obliged, but sprang up and wondered, "Can a chair rock without rockers?" I couldn't help marvelling at the state–of–the art chair. I chose the lesser evil and sprawled on the floor in such a way that my left leg served as a fly-over for the marching army of ants underneath.

On inspecting my surroundings, one of the writings lining the walls of the dawakhana jolted my beliefs. I started to melt with shame, and felt it beneath my dignity to be treated by a person who unabashedly displayed his wife's name on the walls. However, things got settled the moment I was vouchsafed a revelation that Arq-un-Nisa, which I had taken for HS' wife's name, was some sort of a disease.

Well, after the formal explanation of complaint from me, and consolation from him, he conjured up from somewhere a bottle filled with oil and prescribed hair-massage, citing examples deliberately, of those patients unknown to me, to prove his expertise. The khushboodar (according to him) oil that made me sneeze twice, for which I blamed the weather, cost me Rs295. Showing generosity, I overpaid him by Rs5 as shukrana in advance for his unmatched services as my saviour.

Returned home revivified, I set to massage. Massage, massage and nothing else but massage was the order of the day (and for many days afterwards). After over a month-long bout of regular massages, I noticed, instead, rapidity in my hair-fall. Oh no. With a sulky face I revisited him and rued that oil's counter-productivity. He tactfully put it down to my mental weakness. Bringing me round to his viewpoint that I needed urgent cure for mental weakness or else the 'chand' would not take long to appear, he reached for a jar containing tablets made from snuff-like substance.

By the look of it, the jar was a rare antique that owned its priceless status to Redi who used it in his experiments on biogenesis. Those fetid tablets, too, were 'khushboodar' to his nose. I ventured upon disagreement but chickened out of it fearing I might be diagnosed with some nasal disease.