My neighborhood hair salon just shut down. The one I've been going to ever since I arrived in Hong Kong. Just like that.

No goodbyes, no easing into the separation, no one last wash and styling. It's once again left me ruing my lack of local language skills, or I would have been warned, wouldn't I? Now I will never know the whereabouts of the lovely Nepalese lady who made shampoo time such a treat, or that uber-stylish young lad who worked magic on scant locks, all the while working his smartphone with one hand. Like the rest of the friendly hairdressers and counter managers, they've just disappeared from my life forever.

It brought home to me with renewed cruelty the flux that defines our uncertain times. More fool I, to expect any permanence in the shape-shifting chimera that is Hong Kong. But then I am from Calcutta, where the more things change (elsewhere), the more they remain the same.