To have a haircut or not to have one has always been a question of perennial confusion for me. So much that at times, I have ended up nurturing pony tails hanging behind my head. It is a similar situation when I’m about to shave, but it becomes a compulsion every week, lest I start looking like a walking tree. The point is, today, I faced the same old question: to have a haircut or not. To end my quandary, I gave in to the thought of getting the dreadful task out of my way today itself, and turned up at the neighborhood barbershop.
Now, this is not at all a fancy place. Someone is simply going to turn away glancing at it and calling it ‘pedestrian’. Run by a Mithun Chakravarty inspired North Indian chap, who charges INR 20 (or half a dollar for the un-Indian) for a haircut and throws in a solid head-turning massage for free at the end – the barbershop’s precisely that: a barbershop, dirt cheap, down-to-earth, value-for-money, etc.
When I turned up, there was a queue for occupying one of the three hot seats. On asking him how long it will take for my turn to come up, he flashed a bright smile and said it won’t take any time at all, and engaged himself in shaving the present occupant of the hot seat number one. After waiting for about ten minutes (I think it was longer, but I’ll find happiness in counting ten minutes), it was my turn at hot seat number three.
I explained the chap, who was about to do the honours, with what kind of haircut I needed. Right then, another barber turns up and claimed his right to work at the hot seat number three, and in effect my hairy top-floor. I explained the new barber again, what kind of a haircut I needed. Scarcely before he finished listening to me, he zoomed off with his work, making me nod 90 degree downward for about 45 minutes.
In the meantime, he also plugged in a music CD into his loud music system, which blared out Altaf Raja’s qawwali: “Tum toh thehre pardesi, saath kya nibhaoge…” I’m sure it is because of the colonial mindsets of the Grammy award organizers that this superhit album never attained the glory it deserved. Perhaps they can think of some lifetime achievement award for Altaf Raja…
Back to project haircut. I wondered whether the barber was trying to depict some bottom-up and back-to-front growth of baldness on my head by progressing at length in the said directions. After about an hour’s dance-with-my-hair, the barber claimed the completion of his feat and started with the head-turning-twisting massage with a victorious stance. Thankfully, when I looked up in the mirror, I wasn’t looking too different from what I was supposed to look like.
Oh, believe me, it happened with me at an expensive Chinese barbershop in KL, Malaysia, when I’d reluctantly gone for a haircut. The Chinese like to have their haircuts to be oblique – i.e., they do not hold the pairs of scissors straight while chopping off the growth. So, when I went for this haircut, I asked the barber to hold the scissors straight, after showing him some pictures of Indian-styled haircuts on my cellphone (I had downloaded some pictures of the haircut that I wanted).
The barber looked at the strange creature in the hot seat, gave me a furious look and pulled out a huge Chinese haircut catalogue from his drawer. He dictated me through the catalogue and made me choose the weirdest hairstyle on the planet, and chopped my hair accordingly.
When I stepped back into my world, I was asked: “Did you attempt a haircut all by yourself?”
I dread to think what would’ve been better.
