For a while, few days back, I thought I’d started looking more and more like I did in my kindergarten picture. Over a short period, though, things suddenly changed and I thought I was beginning to look more and like I would 20 years down the line. So I decided to get my hair cut.
I must have looked carefree as I walked in the mild rain without an umbrella and listened to Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Children of Zodiac’ but the thoughts of that time about eighteen months back kept coming back to me. I’d walked into this place in my pyjamas and sandals one early Sunday morning with a pardon-me-for-the-look look on my face for a haircut. Only after I closed the door behind me and heard the women burst out laughing had I realised that it had been a women’s nail saloon.
Well, statistically at least, two things as bad as each other cannot happen to the same person in a row. Though not quite a comforting thought, it was good enough to conceal my apprehension as I walked down
This little house, so little I could see both its exterior walls at once as I stood on the same side of the road as the house, had this neon sign that read ‘Barber shop’. Must be one hell of a humble barber. Wonder if he had a son named ‘Boy’. This place, this little house, was the kind you see in colouring books. Wooden. Sloping roofs. Tiny little lawn. A wooden bench. Little wooden fence. Flowery bushes. 2 stairs led to the door and they creaked as I walked up. I turned the knob. It clicked open. I pushed the door and 2 things happened. Both of which brought back a little of the apprehension that had almost vanished on seeing the board proclaim that this was the place. First, chimes sounded. The sound itself was not unnerving. Was sort of sweet even. But it sounded somewhat like a burglar alarm to me and I didn’t like this at all. Second, the place. This little place looked like a witch’s den to me. Not that I’d seen one before. But this, I guess, is how they ought to look. It was little and smelly. Dull. Stuffed. When I say stuffed, imagine a place with so many little things hung on the walls, so many little pictures stuck in the cracks of walls tables, separators, so many that …well… there were lots of them.
I kind of regained my composure and walked in. A mirror. And a chair. Not bad. Finally something not completely unexpected. This was in the room I had entered. This led to another one. And there was another mirror on the wall on this room. Don’t remember if the old man came just before or after I had called out. I mumbled something about getting my hair cut. Was asked to leave my jacked on the stand. While I proceeded to act according to instructions, he donned this white doctor-like coat. This was kind of weird because the chair was not facing the mirror on the wall and he was standing with his back to the chair. For a moment I pictured myself standing there with my head bent to his convenience while he sat there with his coat on and went on chopping. Trust me. I did. Thankfully, it was to be more conventional. He motioned me to the chair and I noticed a lot of things now. There was Salman Khan’s photo stuck somewhere. Most of the things hanging on the walls were certificates of some kind. If I’d ever make a cheap sci-fi movie, he’d play my mad scientist and I’d use this house for it. The certificates could hang there and they wouldn’t be out of place. He pulled some lever somewhere as I sat on the chair. And the chair, with a little sigh raised and turned me towards the mirror.
I was scanning the contents of the mirror table as he draped this blue clothe on me and put some kind of a tape around my neck. I was thinking Salman Khan would be a good conversation starter while I noticed that the wooden statue on the table looked oddly Indian. Looked like a south Indian Goddess to me. You can never tell. I think Thai Gods look like that too. And some forms of Buddha. This was the second most interesting thing on the table. The first, was a little wooden statue. It was of a barber and (I almost said barbie) this guy. The barber had scissors and comb in his hand and most significantly wore this huge grin. And the poor guy, I could tell, was anything but comfortable. For starters, he had no hands. They were under the blue cloth but it gave the impression that they were either chopped off (by the barber I’d say) or were tied behind him. He had a look of horror and helplessness on his face. I was playing on with silly imaginings of this sadistic barber when suddenly I saw in the mirror that this barber behind me produced something black and long from his coat pocket that looked like a pen knife. Before I grasped what was happening he quickly stuck that thing in the centre of my head upright. I’d have been embarrassed had I let out a scream. That turned out to be a comb. What on earth was he up to? You wouldn’t expect someone to stick that thing upright on your head, would you? And then he carefully pulled the hair around it and stretched it on the comb. ‘2.5 inches’ he said. ‘What?’ ‘You hair’s two point five inches long. How long do you want me to make it’. (Was he building a bridge or something? I mean how would you answer a question like that?) ‘1 inch’ I said. Carefully weighing the possibility of it being ridiculously short against the chance of me having to come back here too soon to blow another 7 bucks. After a brief discussion about how long exactly one inch was and how he wouldn’t want to give me two haircuts and how I should have washed my hair that morning, he began his work.
After I succeeded in disregarding the fact that it was my head that he was working on, it was fun to watch him work. He had this array of automatic blades on the wall to my left and would toss one in the air and catch it like a wannabe bartender. Then he’d run it all over my head. It got boring after a while and I got lost as he used almost every tool in his kitty on my head. Sometime then he also sprayed a lot of water on my head. I said something about the Indian God and we had a brief conversation about that. By the time I realised it, he had parted my hair in a rather interesting fashion. The first thing I did when I noticed that was to turn to my right and see if I was visible from the road. I was kind of worried that someone I knew might turn up at the window to behold the spectacle. And that was because, God knows for what reason, he had parted my hair into 5 regions. The first one was the area right above my forehead. With all my wet hair neatly combed down to my forehead so that some skin was still visible above my eyebrows. The other was the part above my right ear with almost a similar effect. The third was behind my head and symmetric to the first one while the fourth above my left ear was symmetric to the second one. The fifth one… was the killer. He had managed to collect all my long wet hair in one heap so that it made a little pyramid on top of my head. The only thing that matched it in shape better than a pyramid was the upper half of an onion. Yes, that’s right. And I firmly believe that the height of this thing must have been closer to 4 inches than 2.5. I just sat there staring at this thing in the mirror as he carefully went on smoothening all of the five areas. Few machines and few more partitions later, the configuration was undone. Thank heavens. Then he stepped back and, stroking his chin, looked at his work from a distance. He continued to work and I lost interest again. There was a red sheet with some golden metal writing on it that hung on the wall behind him. I thought it was something from the bible. It took a while for me to read the thing in the mirror. When put together, it read ‘Due to increasing prices, we are forced to raise our prices slightly’.
When it was finally done I gave this I-like-it-a-lot nod and he gave this I-knew-you-would grin.
1 comment:
LOL!
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