Short fiction: Two cousins prepare for impending adulthood, while their fathers brace themselves

The tall father is already basking in the sun in the verandah when the short father and his son arrive. The short father joins the tall father, and they soon start an earnest conversation. Fathers always seem to talk about serious things. Waiting and idling come easy to them.

The short father’s son skitters to the broken mirror hanging from a pillar in the verandah and starts sharpening the tip of his hairs, like a bull raking its horn on the earth, getting ready for the charge. He notices a smug look on his cousin’s mother’s face; he needs to tell her that he left home without doing his hair. But she refuses to wipe the smug look off her face.

The tall cousin comes out from his room dressed in the school uniform, a red sweater and a pair of blue trousers. He dismisses his mother and says that grownups never understand anything about hair. He turns to the cousin and signs to him to ignore his mother.

The shorter cousin, now done with gelling his hair, sits down on a cane stool by the cousin’s mother. He fishes out a worn-out notebook from his bag and begins to run his middle finger...

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