The Haircut

Even the Governor of your place does not affect your life so directly as the barber. The barber can radically affect your social prospects. He can redefine your unkempt coiffure to give you the dapper look; he can transmogrify the debonair into a barbarian; he can virtually play with your social life. And all within a matter of half an hour.

The past weekend I decided to experiment at a saloon just round the corner which was receiving rave reviews from my friends. I did not circumvent the change, as I normally would have, because the next day I was to meet some girls after a long time. I needed to be prim and proper. I was ushered in enthusiastically by a rather young fellow who, it seemed, was raring to show his adroitness with the scissors. When the long white apron draped me, I cursorily began to issue my customary instructions. "Medium." I started. Before I could run through with the rest of the customary instructions, he fished out a brochure of sorts. "Sir, which of these heart-ruffling hairstyles would you like to make your own?" And he proudly flashed before me a comprehensive literature of hairstyles, which seemed to have catalogued every possible hairstyle, from the mushroom cut to the David Beckham hairdo; from the luxurious locks falling over the nape to the bald pate. He inquisitioned with supreme nonchalance, "Would you like the Salman Khan crop or the Shahrukh Khan hairdo?" His peremptory intoning drove me into speculation for a moment. Salman Khan's crop is a cover-up for a hairstyle these days; I have some days to go before I need such a camouflaging coiffure. And Shahrukh's hair is too thick for mine; an imitation will only make me resemble the temple priest. So I firmly gave my orders, "Let it just be Medium. And be sure to cut uniformly on all sides." He seemed a tad disappointed but all the same got down to business with a flourish. Cosily ensconced before the mirror, I began to admire the reflection of the pate of a bald man who was sitting with his back to mine. His haircut should cost more, I callowly chuckled; the poor barber actually has to search for strands of hair to cut! Probably he should go to a 'Hair Growing Saloon', I guffawed within myself. My juvenile humour was cut short when a thick lock of hair fell right into my eyes. I brushed it away and refocussed my gaze onto myself and found instead somebody I thought to be a reincarnation of Laloo Prasad Yadav! Shocked! My face had been maliciously maimed, mutiliated by the barber. I now most certainly looked like the priest who has a small portion of his forehead tonsured! And the rest of the hair simply stuck outward like a pin-cushion! My heart sank with the thick locks of hair that tangoed to the ground celebrating their new-found freedom. I do not know if he bore me a grudge. But now I certainly will bear him one for the rest of my life! I had to ignominously remain seated wearing an oversized cap in the sweltering Madras heat in my first tryst with socialising.

I have heard of stories in which the barbers go particularly berserk with some types of hair. The wavy and the curly hair-forms suffer the most. The barber says, the hair looks good only when the curls and the waves are removed. And he snips off all the curls and waves with the ruthlessness of an executioner. And then the half-inch length of hair certainly looks better. Only, what becomes of the face is far too graphic to warrant a description. I know a friend with curly hair who removed his spectacles and sat down for a haircut. He closed his eyes right through the ordeal because he could not descry himself in the mirror sans his spectacles. And when he wore back his glasses, he stormed out of the barber-shop criminating the barber of doing him a nose-job and stretching out his ears so as to make them flap outwards!

Experience has taught me that these Scissor-armed butchers do not display any special predilection for celebrities either. And celebrities, being who they are, throw all kinds of queer reactions to the adversity. The last time the press saw Rajnikanth with a tonsured pate, he managed well explaining that he dozed away while at the mercy of the barber. And when Kamal Hassan's barber pruned everything, he covered up well claiming that it was to get into his forthcoming character for a film that was never released! When Akshaye Khanna's barber uncovered all his bald patches, the hairstyle was made to be youthful, and it became quite a craze too; not always do people get to fashionably flaunt their baldness!

Apart from that one meeting that I was almost bulldozed into attending, I cancelled all my other engagements for the rest of the week and remained a recluse in self-imposed incarceration within the walls of my room. I just couldn't come to terms with my reshaped head. I remember fuming to myself the chant which I intoned to ridicule the other bad haircuts:

I went to him for a hair-cut,
Instead he did a Square-Cut!

- posted by Dileepan @ 6:39:00 am

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