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 I’m very selective about who cuts my hair. When for the first time I got my hair cut (being a Sikh, I had long hair once) monthly visits to a barber became a hassle because I walk with crutches. My elder sister decided to become my hairdresser, and she cut my hair till she got married. Since she wasn’t trained in the art, my various hairstyles used to perplex many people. That was a squally period of my life and my hairstyle was the last thing that could bother me or the people who were extremely close to me. Actually, it was a blessing for her as she got the hang of haircutting. At first everyone in the family had reservations against it (if u remember I come from a Sikh family); as such they were so much aghast at me cutting off my hair.

For you to get to this I will have to go to the background of the story.

I had actually cut my hair, myself early one morning. It was the Sunday my mother washed my hair very religiously. I was not very happy with this weekly ritual. Mentally I was weak as I could not interact with the boys of my age- being on crutches. I wanted to do something as I was different already. So that morning just as I got up early my hair, as always, was in tangles (my hair was very thick and long) and I just could not bear to tie it up. Going to the washroom I took up the scissors that my father used to trim his beard and also his underarms in summers. I had seen him do it on the sly. Publically we were nice Sikh people who prayed regularly and went to the sikh temple. And before another thought I just got the scissors into the hair and scrunched off the long strands. For a moment I felt stunned but it was done. And a few more snips and I was transformed into a jagged hair urchin. But the freeness of the head was new to me and I felt kind of calm. I knew the battering I was to receive from my mom and dad.

I quietly slipped into bed after gathering the long hairs and putting them into the garbage bag. My fantasy had come true. And I was wondering how I would cope up with the relatives. And how would I get a barber to straighten my style. It was forbidden for a barber to come to our house and I could not go to one on my own. But as the day dawned I heard my mother call out that she was bringing in the morning tea. I just hid my head into the covers and feigned sleep. And when she came to wake me up she got the shock of her life and she spelt out the choicest rebukes which when translated from Punjabi meant that she should have died before she saw me in this form. And what had she done wrong to force her child to take onto this path. And so on… But internally I was pleased as I had done what I thought was safe for me. The shouting brought the household together and as my elder sister giggled from behind my mother’s back my father stood a serene self reassuring my mother to keep quiet.

And when all the drama was over, and mother left in a huff; my sister came and embraced me. I was surprised. She then disclosed that I had done what she could not do earlier. She also told me that she will stand by me and as the barber cannot come to our house, she would act as my barber and straighten my jagged hair. Then we could tie a cloth around my head and take me to her friend’s place a little off our locality. She was from a Hindu family and had many times asked my sister to trim her hair as she did. But today my sister would ask her to help her and accompany her to the barber. My sister then took a pair of scissors and tried to snip off the hairs from the forehead so that they resembled as if presentable. And then she did not have any knowledge of doing the back. She tried to do as she had seen the parlour lady do when she had visited with her friend. But it got her nowhere and actually cut off patches which went all off. All this while my mother was scolding my sister for helping me out when I had committed a crime, so to say. And my father said nothing.

We soon hired a rickshaw and went to the friend’s house. She was happy but surprised to see us early in the morning. As soon as my sister explained to her the reason she first was aghast, then surprised and when my sister took off the head cloth she laughed her head off. She said it was a good cause for the barber. She knew the one where her brother and father went regularly. She had also been there when she was small and had enjoyed her trips. Now she had long hair beyond the shoulders and kept well trimmed. She would talk to the barber and ask him if he could come home to help them. Soon she was back and the barber would be coming in a few minutes. We had tea while we were waiting and her mother also expressed more of surprise at seeing me. But she did not say anything else and said that I could stay at their place until things cooled off.

The barber came and the whole story was explained to him. I suddenly found myself in the middle of all activities. And the barber started his work and explained that he would have to cut it very short as it was in bad shape. It was my first experience at a professional but I took a brave heart. He put a white cloth around my neck and then wetted my hairs with a sprayer. Combed the sides and saw how to do things. The hair was cut short around the ears and the nape was cleaned with the clippers as it was already short there. The hair on the top was leveled into shape and it was the cut by the scissors over comb method (a terminology I picked up later). The straight razor was then used to clean up beneath the ears and along the hair line. My side burns were made to perfection and the razor was used to shape them. I also felt the razor scrape a little on the cheek. As he finished and took off the cloth after cleaning the neck and the head with a big brush I found a lot of hair on the floor. I was surprised, as I had left sooooo…. much on the bathroom floor this morning. The neck was powdered and my hair combed. My sister’s friend paid for my first haircut as a gift present. I looked in the mirror and could not recognize myself and felt good as I could feel my head to be light and air passing through the hair. But the best gift came when my sister came and gave me a bear hug. I cannot forget that day when she stood by me.

And then she whispered something into her friend’s ear. She laughed and then said I was the handsome boy after the makeover and looked better than the other boys in the neighbourhood. And then my sister went to another room with her friend. Soon they came out and her friend called up the barber before he left. She opened her hair clip and I saw that she had hair upto her shoulder blades. My sister also came alongside and unbraided her plait. She had long hair almost upto her hips. My sister’s friend asked the barber to trim her hair by about a couple of inches so that it gave a straight profile. He did it with ease and then she motioned him to trim some of my sister’s hair. I was surprised!

He asked how much and she answered ‘At least six inches’. He combed her hair to the end so as to straighten it. I could see that my sister was disturbed and nervous visually. But she stood her ground and the barber after grooming her hair snipped off slowly her dry hair. As he did so her hair stood on ends but he then wet his comb and then smoothed the hair. Inching upwards he snipped off six inches and she had a straight line of hair. She was pleased and the barber said it was complementary and did not charge them for the services. He had actually got a new customer.

My visits to the friend’s house became a monthly feature as my mother would have nothing of a barber on her house. And my sister got a chance of getting her regular trims too. (I will narrate other hair cuts in the next episode).

I started visiting the barbers when I joined college. It saved me one way of walk because while coming home from college, I could take the auto rickshaw to the barber shop. I would ask the driver if he could wait. If yes, well and good, otherwise I could always walk home from the market. That was the Central market of Nauroji Nagar. There used to be a barber there called Prem Nath. The matter was different if he was not there; otherwise, if he was busy, I would insist on waiting for him despite the other barbers in the shop sitting idle. Of course, this perturbed the other barbers but once I began liking a particular barber (I mean, the way he cut my hair) I changed him with great discomfort. People around me often attributed this attachment to my barber to some weird fetish of mine.

The same happened with the barber in the Green Park hair salon; his name was Faqruddin. When we moved to Sarita Vihar, my biggest loss was Prem Nath and soon I could make braids of my hair — they were so long. Once, I don’t remember why, I had to go to the Yusuf Sarai market and on my way I noticed a salon that didn’t have stairs. My seventies hairstyle — my hair falling on my shoulders and eyebrows, etc. — had really begun to get me down. So as soon as I sat on the chair, I told the barber to cut them as short as possible. The crew cut he orchestrated was simply thrilling and henceforth commenced our 2-year long association. Faqruddin, unlike Prem Nath, reciprocated my preference for him and he rarely kept me waiting whenever I went there, and I too used to cover a distance of 40-50 kilometers (by then we had a car with a driver) just to have a hair cut. One day he disappeared and nobody in the salon had a clue where he had gone.

Then we found a shop in Sarita Vihar itself and the owner agreed to send the barber to our house. This time it was a barber called Raju. He often complained that when he visited our house he missed the customers at the shop (although most barbers are hired by the shops, I think they also receive tips from regular customers), so I started calling him on Tuesdays when most barber shops are closed due to some religious issue. I liked the way Raju cut my hair and my special affinity to him, and his certain way of talking earned him the nick name of “Raju Darling” in our household — of course he never knew that. Raju believed in maintaining multiple streams of income so he had many clients — mostly ladies — outside of his barber shop employment. Tuesday used to be (hopefully, still is) the most profitable day for him because that day he visited many of his clients for cutting, trimming, coloring, and all sorts of beauty related facial and hairy contrivances. His visits to my abode and hence his access to my cranium ended with we moving to NOIDA. He came once, but then he was untraceable, and hence, the current state of my hair.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, my elder sister used to cut my hair. So I thought, if she could do it, why could not my wife, Alka. Even if together we couldn’t achieve the right kind of result, anything was better than having Amitabh Bachchan’s hairstyle. After a persuasion of an entire week, last night she relented and at 3:30 in the morning we began our hair-raising, umm…hair-erasing foray. She first employed the conventional method, which is, using the comb and the only rusted pair of scissors we have. For good 20 minutes, everything looked neat and for a while I even thought we could give Raju a run for his money. Then Vasu, who was crawling around on the floor, protested loudly for being neglected for such a long time and Alka had to pick her up. This gave, yours truly, a chance to play with the scissors and within 5 minutes my hair looked like, as Alka put it later on, as if a crow had pecked at it to its heart’s content. So much skin was visible that we decided to do away with all the content. For that Alka happily used my Philips electric shaver. Although in between we had to recharge the battery, I went to take bath, for the first time in life, with no hair on my head.

I think this proved to be a blessing in disguise because I’m really liking my new hairless look. This is also because Alka has always liked me to shave off my moustache; but somewhere the sikh blood wanted me to keep it even if prim and trimmed. Today I asked Alka to shave it off since I had already shaved my head. It was a dream come true for her and she did it, though hesitantly, very carefully avoiding any nicks, with my Mach 3. The upper lip was now a shade lighter than my face and it was so smooth that I promised Alka not to grow my mousche after that. Although Alka says I look like a WWE wrestler I think this eliminates for ever the trouble of seeking different barbers and getting used to them. Every 15 days now I can shave my head; the bristles are nice to feel but the expertise of my wife in shaving me smooth is appreciated. Giving her a tip is better than going to a barber. I appreciate her feeling of my head every time she runs her hand over my head but it is the smoothness that engulfs me. I even like the feel of air upon it.

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