My earliest memories of getting my mane mowed (for that was the treatment it used to get), consist of my uncle balancing me and my cousin on his kinetic honda, taking us to a 'saloon' (lol, in retrospect), conveniently located next to a sweet store (or a general store from which we were given confectioneries). Once there, we would be made to sit on larger than life cushions. Once comfortably seated, we (my cousin and I) would compete with each other in who bawls the loudest so as to irk other customers the most, which in turn would lead the barber-uncle to finish up quickly, thus bringing the ordeal to a speedy end. Even if the former is just an afterthought, the latter definitely was on our agenda. And we had our reasons...
Take the 'machine' (the colloqial name for clippers) for example - a most intimidating tool of such monstrosity that it would manually pluck out all the hair from the back and sides (or wherever used). Now, this would not only pain but tickle as well, which wasn't very helpful, because our screams would be interrupted by unwanted giggles. And we didn't have electric ones.. oh no.. These were the brutal, manual ones - no german efficiency in painlessly mowing the lawn - but good old Ulhasnagar technology which aided the barber-uncle to carefully aim at the roots so as to methodically pull each one out. Ouch!
Then came another horror – the Blade (razor, using a stainless steel blade). This was really evil. It would tickle and pain and awkward movement meant instant death. Or at least a bloody mess. You’re right, I AM exaggerating. It only meant instant death. Gosh that thing was scary! It was usually at this juncture that I began bawling again, this time with renewed vigor. The wounds, though not grave used to hurt while shampooing at home. Sinister fiends!
Finally came the dusting with the carpet brush immersed in talcum powder – making a hard to detect mixture of fine remnants of hair (from the machine) and the coarse particles of the talc. No wonder my parents used to insist on me having a thorough scrubbing down upon my return. Although by then I used to be in better spirits thanks to the lollipop from the store next door. Come to think of it. The lollipop was the sole reason I used to consent to be put through the torture in the first place. Yum!
Gradually, as I grew up, no more uncles or daddy used to come. I used to go and get a St. Joseph cut (upon gripping the head no hair should be grasp-able). This cut ensured a clean, smart look as well as deterred hair pulling during fights. This evolved to an even closer (if that were possible) NCC cut. If not, it meant a lot of laps and more parade hours. Ah, what trouble-free hair maintenance.
Come Std 11 and my entry into Fergusson College, I didn’t change my cut much – somewhere between an NCC and a St. Joseph. This did not go down so well not only with some of the girls but also the barber – Arey beta, tum college mein ho. Itna chota bhi mat karwana. Medium accha rahega! I used to insist on keeping it short. I really liked the clean, comfortable look (others might beg to differ). Then came degree college, with its even more skewed sex ratio (I was studying humanities, what can one expect!) and hence more of the female influence on how my hair should look. It would be appropriate to mention now, that the female influence of my mother was omnipresent, at least as far as my hairstyle went – she wouldn’t let me enter the house after my monthly visit to the barber’s if the length was not sufficiently short. As a compromise, I used to keep my hair longer than a St. Joseph but slightly shorter than a medium, thanks to the electric clippers (what a relief).
As more and more college days passed the interval between the cutting waala visits increased. My preferences for hair style didn’t change, I just became lazier. Anyway, for my Masters course I moved away from home – towards a set of entirely new female influence on my hair. But here, a new curiosity had gripped me - I wanted to see how long my hair would grow in 2 years of not cutting. The plan was a good one and I marched through Christ University determined to not cut my hair. I had not envisaged that I would be going back home for the break, thus resulting in a hair-cut (mothers, I tell you! And fathers, and grandfathers…!) Although this produced a singular reaction in the barber (who had renovated his shop and made it AC and a ghastly colour of green, by then). He proudly proclaimed to his (presumably) newer customers – Is ladke ko dekho, bachpan se humare paas cutting karata hai. Padhai ke liye Bangalore gaya lekin phir bhi idhar se ich baal kataata. Aise hote hain humare purane custumber (yes, that is what they call customers in Khadki, where I live)
Anyway, after the break I resolved to not cut my hair at all, no matter what. My friend Rakeeb (who used to have very long hair, once) was the only fellow who empathetically egged me on. My hair grew and turned a weird mix of curly, frizzy and wavy. It used to look cool at times (very rare) and downright ghastly at others (most of the time). Pressure, from teachers, guy AND gal friends, random acquaintances, was mounting. I refused to budge. The bee was in the bonnet, wouldn’t come out. I stuck by my resolution.
My friends adopted a new strategy - that of empathy but with an underlying nature of advice. “I know you want to grow it. No harm in that. But at least trim it and shape it so that it doesn’t look so wild. Once the shape is given, at least it will grow properly.” This was repeated over and over again till I began believing it myself. However, such a service could only be availed of in a fancy place – one of those unisex parlours. I don’t mind the unisex bit, it’s just that such places are freaking expensive – 400 rupees for a simple haircut? That’s more than a year’s worth of haircut for me! Luckily, thanks to my savvy friend Ninad, I was recommended to this unisex place which charged only Rs. 90 for the good old snip-snip – Still worth three haircuts but considering I hadn’t cut my hair in six months it seemed like a fair deal.
So I went to this place. It had a receptionist! Now I know it is stupid to feel surprised but I was! After listening to some heavily accented sweet talk I was ushered to the hairdresser’s chair. The not unfamiliar sight of a north-eastern man greeted me and asked me how I would like it cut. After a detailed 5 minute story about long hair and shape in which it will grow properly, he smiles and asks – “So, short, medium or just a trim?” I began thinking I should have waited till my holidays where I could get it done in good old Khadki only. With a deep breath, I explained everything very slowly, with actions, again. He responded “So, medium then?” AIYYOOOOOO!! Ahona, who had happened to come along, tried her hand at explaining, which elicited a “Just a trim, yes?” I resigned myself to the fate of his ‘just a trim’ and Ahona left to meet her friend.
This was a very unique experience. The place smelt pleasant. There was free hair-wash to look forward to. The fellow seemed extremely talented. He moved with exquisite grace (at least it looked like it without my spectacles on) and snipped away with glee all around my head, barely touching the strands of hair. At moments, he would delicately hold my hair, twist it around his fingers, somehow manage to get a comb in the equation and finally, with his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, end with a careful, laborious and one may even go so far as to call it artistic, SNIP. He didn’t even hint at using the fancy looking clippers and I could see no blade lying around. He went on with this for 20 minutes or so. He carefully shaped the front, the sides and the back, all with scissors (ah what magic – look ma, no blade!)
After that came the massage. The head massage at my local ‘saloon’ costed 30 rupees and the recruit barbers used to undergo special “pehelwan” training before they were allowed to provide this service. Good old Navratan (thanda thanda cool cool) Oil was used to nicely oil the hair, forehead, temples and nape, to prepare the bones for the rattling they were about to undergo. The ‘massage’ there used to be so powerful that I was sure a few of my vertebrae had exchanged positions not to mention my shoulder muscles (I use the term loosely) which used to be pounded to a pulp. Then he used to thump the back of my skull with the frighteningly loud noise of his knuckles, which sometimes led me to doubt whether it was the knuckle or the skull which was cracking. All this, renewed my faith in the song “sar jo tera chakraaye…” Seriously, all you needed was a champi from this fellow and all tensions became a thing of the past.
Seeing how I have been through a lot of stress, what with innumerable submissions and impending exams, I decided to treat myself to a head massage, so as to feel better. I was almost conned into getting a 600 rupee hair spa (whatever the hell THAT is - fancy name for conditioning I suppose). I settled for the 150 rupee oil massage. Here they used olive oil and a dainty looking maiden was the masseuse. After carefully getting the oil in, and spreading it throughout, she began carefully massaging the head in different angles. I was hoping she would up the ante a bit and switch to a higher gear. Nothing of the sort happened. This gentle, tranquil, even placid ‘massage’ went on for I don’t know how long. She tried her best, I suppose, to be forceful by trying to crush the skull from different positions, but I suppose I was used to much more abuse to be perturbed. It barely had an effect, forget a soothing one. I suppose she sensed that and she took out the head rest and made me recline. She sort of can-canned with her fingers (pom-pom – papapapa – pom-pom…) on my forehead and this felt extremely good. I heaved a sigh of relief thinking, the money didn’t TOTALLY go down the drain. In an effort to shift gears she tried that knuckle breaking stunt, which I found amusing. I’m sure if this was my first time it would have felt amazing, but again, my already thick skull was further thickened by years of knuckle hammering. Anyway, it all ended with a nice shampoo and blow dry.
So all in all, an expensive proposition, which made me miss my local saloon even more. Indirectly, it has also deepened my resolve to NOT cut my hair (trim or otherwise), at least for a year. Now let’s see how well this goes down with the LAY-DAYssss J (some might argue these are imaginary.. but that is for another blog post altogether)
Take the 'machine' (the colloqial name for clippers) for example - a most intimidating tool of such monstrosity that it would manually pluck out all the hair from the back and sides (or wherever used). Now, this would not only pain but tickle as well, which wasn't very helpful, because our screams would be interrupted by unwanted giggles. And we didn't have electric ones.. oh no.. These were the brutal, manual ones - no german efficiency in painlessly mowing the lawn - but good old Ulhasnagar technology which aided the barber-uncle to carefully aim at the roots so as to methodically pull each one out. Ouch!
Then came another horror – the Blade (razor, using a stainless steel blade). This was really evil. It would tickle and pain and awkward movement meant instant death. Or at least a bloody mess. You’re right, I AM exaggerating. It only meant instant death. Gosh that thing was scary! It was usually at this juncture that I began bawling again, this time with renewed vigor. The wounds, though not grave used to hurt while shampooing at home. Sinister fiends!
Finally came the dusting with the carpet brush immersed in talcum powder – making a hard to detect mixture of fine remnants of hair (from the machine) and the coarse particles of the talc. No wonder my parents used to insist on me having a thorough scrubbing down upon my return. Although by then I used to be in better spirits thanks to the lollipop from the store next door. Come to think of it. The lollipop was the sole reason I used to consent to be put through the torture in the first place. Yum!
Gradually, as I grew up, no more uncles or daddy used to come. I used to go and get a St. Joseph cut (upon gripping the head no hair should be grasp-able). This cut ensured a clean, smart look as well as deterred hair pulling during fights. This evolved to an even closer (if that were possible) NCC cut. If not, it meant a lot of laps and more parade hours. Ah, what trouble-free hair maintenance.
Come Std 11 and my entry into Fergusson College, I didn’t change my cut much – somewhere between an NCC and a St. Joseph. This did not go down so well not only with some of the girls but also the barber – Arey beta, tum college mein ho. Itna chota bhi mat karwana. Medium accha rahega! I used to insist on keeping it short. I really liked the clean, comfortable look (others might beg to differ). Then came degree college, with its even more skewed sex ratio (I was studying humanities, what can one expect!) and hence more of the female influence on how my hair should look. It would be appropriate to mention now, that the female influence of my mother was omnipresent, at least as far as my hairstyle went – she wouldn’t let me enter the house after my monthly visit to the barber’s if the length was not sufficiently short. As a compromise, I used to keep my hair longer than a St. Joseph but slightly shorter than a medium, thanks to the electric clippers (what a relief).
As more and more college days passed the interval between the cutting waala visits increased. My preferences for hair style didn’t change, I just became lazier. Anyway, for my Masters course I moved away from home – towards a set of entirely new female influence on my hair. But here, a new curiosity had gripped me - I wanted to see how long my hair would grow in 2 years of not cutting. The plan was a good one and I marched through Christ University determined to not cut my hair. I had not envisaged that I would be going back home for the break, thus resulting in a hair-cut (mothers, I tell you! And fathers, and grandfathers…!) Although this produced a singular reaction in the barber (who had renovated his shop and made it AC and a ghastly colour of green, by then). He proudly proclaimed to his (presumably) newer customers – Is ladke ko dekho, bachpan se humare paas cutting karata hai. Padhai ke liye Bangalore gaya lekin phir bhi idhar se ich baal kataata. Aise hote hain humare purane custumber (yes, that is what they call customers in Khadki, where I live)
Anyway, after the break I resolved to not cut my hair at all, no matter what. My friend Rakeeb (who used to have very long hair, once) was the only fellow who empathetically egged me on. My hair grew and turned a weird mix of curly, frizzy and wavy. It used to look cool at times (very rare) and downright ghastly at others (most of the time). Pressure, from teachers, guy AND gal friends, random acquaintances, was mounting. I refused to budge. The bee was in the bonnet, wouldn’t come out. I stuck by my resolution.
My friends adopted a new strategy - that of empathy but with an underlying nature of advice. “I know you want to grow it. No harm in that. But at least trim it and shape it so that it doesn’t look so wild. Once the shape is given, at least it will grow properly.” This was repeated over and over again till I began believing it myself. However, such a service could only be availed of in a fancy place – one of those unisex parlours. I don’t mind the unisex bit, it’s just that such places are freaking expensive – 400 rupees for a simple haircut? That’s more than a year’s worth of haircut for me! Luckily, thanks to my savvy friend Ninad, I was recommended to this unisex place which charged only Rs. 90 for the good old snip-snip – Still worth three haircuts but considering I hadn’t cut my hair in six months it seemed like a fair deal.
So I went to this place. It had a receptionist! Now I know it is stupid to feel surprised but I was! After listening to some heavily accented sweet talk I was ushered to the hairdresser’s chair. The not unfamiliar sight of a north-eastern man greeted me and asked me how I would like it cut. After a detailed 5 minute story about long hair and shape in which it will grow properly, he smiles and asks – “So, short, medium or just a trim?” I began thinking I should have waited till my holidays where I could get it done in good old Khadki only. With a deep breath, I explained everything very slowly, with actions, again. He responded “So, medium then?” AIYYOOOOOO!! Ahona, who had happened to come along, tried her hand at explaining, which elicited a “Just a trim, yes?” I resigned myself to the fate of his ‘just a trim’ and Ahona left to meet her friend.
This was a very unique experience. The place smelt pleasant. There was free hair-wash to look forward to. The fellow seemed extremely talented. He moved with exquisite grace (at least it looked like it without my spectacles on) and snipped away with glee all around my head, barely touching the strands of hair. At moments, he would delicately hold my hair, twist it around his fingers, somehow manage to get a comb in the equation and finally, with his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, end with a careful, laborious and one may even go so far as to call it artistic, SNIP. He didn’t even hint at using the fancy looking clippers and I could see no blade lying around. He went on with this for 20 minutes or so. He carefully shaped the front, the sides and the back, all with scissors (ah what magic – look ma, no blade!)
After that came the massage. The head massage at my local ‘saloon’ costed 30 rupees and the recruit barbers used to undergo special “pehelwan” training before they were allowed to provide this service. Good old Navratan (thanda thanda cool cool) Oil was used to nicely oil the hair, forehead, temples and nape, to prepare the bones for the rattling they were about to undergo. The ‘massage’ there used to be so powerful that I was sure a few of my vertebrae had exchanged positions not to mention my shoulder muscles (I use the term loosely) which used to be pounded to a pulp. Then he used to thump the back of my skull with the frighteningly loud noise of his knuckles, which sometimes led me to doubt whether it was the knuckle or the skull which was cracking. All this, renewed my faith in the song “sar jo tera chakraaye…” Seriously, all you needed was a champi from this fellow and all tensions became a thing of the past.
Seeing how I have been through a lot of stress, what with innumerable submissions and impending exams, I decided to treat myself to a head massage, so as to feel better. I was almost conned into getting a 600 rupee hair spa (whatever the hell THAT is - fancy name for conditioning I suppose). I settled for the 150 rupee oil massage. Here they used olive oil and a dainty looking maiden was the masseuse. After carefully getting the oil in, and spreading it throughout, she began carefully massaging the head in different angles. I was hoping she would up the ante a bit and switch to a higher gear. Nothing of the sort happened. This gentle, tranquil, even placid ‘massage’ went on for I don’t know how long. She tried her best, I suppose, to be forceful by trying to crush the skull from different positions, but I suppose I was used to much more abuse to be perturbed. It barely had an effect, forget a soothing one. I suppose she sensed that and she took out the head rest and made me recline. She sort of can-canned with her fingers (pom-pom – papapapa – pom-pom…) on my forehead and this felt extremely good. I heaved a sigh of relief thinking, the money didn’t TOTALLY go down the drain. In an effort to shift gears she tried that knuckle breaking stunt, which I found amusing. I’m sure if this was my first time it would have felt amazing, but again, my already thick skull was further thickened by years of knuckle hammering. Anyway, it all ended with a nice shampoo and blow dry.
So all in all, an expensive proposition, which made me miss my local saloon even more. Indirectly, it has also deepened my resolve to NOT cut my hair (trim or otherwise), at least for a year. Now let’s see how well this goes down with the LAY-DAYssss J (some might argue these are imaginary.. but that is for another blog post altogether)
