‘Head message chahiye Sir?’ (Do you want a head message,
sir?), the dark chap almost whispered in my ears, while cutting my hair.
‘Nehi’, (No) say I.
‘Acha lagega sir’ (it will feel good, sir), he said with a
lot of self-assurance.
‘Kitna lagega’ (How much is it)?’ say I.
‘Oil message 70 hain sir’.
‘Without Oil?’
‘60’.
Well a simple haircut is for 50 bucks. 10 rupees extra for a
message is not much, I thought.
‘Thik hain kar do.’ (Okay, do it), said I.
I am always a bit tensed when I am in a saloon. The metallic
sound of the scissors against my ears and on my head makes me nervous. What if
he becomes a bit distracted? There is high probability of my ears getting
chopper off. What if he makes a dent on my head? Almost all my school life, I
never ventured to a salon. I would be surrendering my head to my Mom, instead.
I believed that if I had to trust somebody with my head, then I would rather put
it in my Mom’s hands. Undoubtedly, she did a decent job with my hair. But it
was soon that I was not able to blindly trust her with my hair. The result of
the hair cut would be directly proportional to her mood that day. Days on which
she would be having a rough day at home (lots of utensils to wash, the dog had
shed a lot of fur, Dad had said something which Mom did not like, etc. etc.),
my head would look like a badly mowed lawn with haircuts on those days. Every time
after a haircut, I would look a bit different.