Short Story: Chikna by Vikram Shah

Today, on this glorious Friday morning, twenty six year old Nitin was expecting a letter. Not any ordinary letter. It was a letter that would arrive from the stables of, wait for it, the Limca Book of World Records. This was the day Nitin would receive official confirmation of the fact that he was the only man in the world not to have a single strand of hair on his face.

Thank goodness for that Kamble, Nitin thought gleefully as he leisurely opened the pages of the Navbharat Times to scan the headlines. If it weren’t for him, he wouldn’t be sitting here in his pyjamas, having taken a day off from work, waiting for a letter that would change his life. It was Kamble, a peon at the office of the courier company where Nitin worked, who had goaded him into sending his application to the Limca Book of World Records. His daughter had won the latest edition of the book as a prize in an inter-school essay writing competition. He had been flipping through its pages when he came across a glossy picture of two men with hair all over their faces. Kamble had summoned his daughter to read what was written about these two bhaloos. Turns out they were a pair of brothers from some far off country, Mekshiko or something like that.

At once, Kamble had thought of Nitin, the courier boy who had absolutely no hair on his face. If there could be a world record for having the most hair on one’s face, then why couldn’t there be one for not having any? The young man could do with some cheer in his life, Kamble had thought, thinking about all the times Nitin had been made fun of for not being able to grow a moustache or a beard.