The first time I remember going to it was when I was still in Mumbai, at my Grannies place, and my uncle used to take me there for my hair cut… recently, when I’d gone to Bombay, I’d made it a point to take a notice of the place—and it was still there at the exact same spot where it always was all those years ago. And I have no idea how much it’d changed from the inside, it had an opaque glass-façade doorway, but it was the exact some from the outside that I used to go to as a 5 year old.
I can’t recall the name now, even though I’m sure I had it written down somewhere after I’d come back that week: a quirk of mine to make a note of all the important things in my life… (((wait, I think I just remembered where I kept it—so let me go and see if it’s still there… okay, just found it, but the poor guys seemed to have gotten an unsatisfactory review now, so I’ll try and keep their name on the hush-hush))) even though it was quite nice the way I remember it—hey, I was just five, so what can you expect; they’d take me in, have me sit on the big boy’s chair, with that huge cushion that all the barbershops would usually keep for the kids like me, so that they’d reach high enough for their heads to be aligned to the mirror, and then he’d snip away.
I used to like the fact that I’d get the chance to go there with my Uncle, and it was an only men’s place, so I’d be sitting with all the guys (although now I’m not sure if they have a kind of a beauty salon there too). I think we’d usually go in the evenings, after dark since that’s when my Uncle would come back from work. ((I recall this one time when my mother had had to take me since one of my uncle’s couldn’t, and she asked the hair-dresser from the doorway to cut my hair the way she’d wanted it, and then went and stood-outside while I waited patiently for the scissors to start doing their job…
I don’t know why, or from where I’d gotten the idea implanted in my head, but I always assumed that my parents were just waiting for the opportunity to ditch me somewhere. And so I always had an eye out for her, whenever she’d go outside and stand (okay, now I remember, but the door was translucent from the inside as well) and I’d never be able to see her, except when someone was coming into the place and the door would open, and I’d quickly turn my eyes around to see if I could catch a glimpse of her).
The only problem was that I couldn’t act like a “sissy” in front of her and make her see that I was actually afraid, so would try and act like I was the least bothered about what was happening outside, when in my hearts of heart—I’d be dying to know if I’d ever get the chance to go back home tonight, or whether I’d be put to work in the place to pay off the debt that my mother had accumulated after she’d abandoned me there, and wonder if now I was going to have to be cutting people’s hair for the rest of my life… didn’t seem bad, the place looked kinda nice, and I could manage with a tiny place they’d give me in the corner to sleep in. So who knows?
But mom was always there to pay the amount and collect me to bring me back home. And so were my Uncles, but they’d always be inside so I knew where they were… this changed when I moved to the Gulf and Dad would take me to the Barbers, and I’d gotten a little older now so as to not get so scared. And then when we moved here, for the first few times I’d go with another one of my uncles to have my hair cut, and then started to make the journey on my own since it was pretty close by to my house.
The reason why I’d have to give you a back-story was because of this para here: the Hajjam/Hairdresser that I go to these days has become sort of a friend of mine (after the accident, he was the only one of the few in the area to come home to cut my hair—of course, he would charge double his usual fee, but at least he didn’t mind coming) so I kind of tried not make anything of it when for the past three years he would make me wait for a good hour almost until he’d finish up on someone else’s hair, even though I’d come before them… this would go on for quite a while, until recently I stopped going to him, and then when he noticed I wasn’t coming anymore I think he sort of understood why, because from the next time onwards when I started going back he was careful not to push me around too much, and I sort of liked that, until today…
Today, not only did he have to finish up on the guy who was sitting there right before I’d come in, and another one who had come and seen someone else in the room (his elder brother who works with him just had open heart surgery so he can’t really exert himself too much and stays home for two or three days a week) and had left to come back after I’d come, but then a third too because he explained to me that he was an elderly gentleman so if I didn’t mind he’d finish off his first… and you know what—all three of them were genuine… the first one of course as he was getting his work done before I was, the second one because after he’d come in he started having done the exact same thing that the man had told me he would be coming back for, and the third who, when he was over with, his haircut (which must’ve taken a couple of minutes—stood up an thanked me before he left… he was headed to Bangalore in the evening, to see his daughter off to the States, and then god only knows how long before they’d be reunited.
But me, I was happy that I was in such a good mood today, and didn’t mind the wait so much when I realized he was being truthful about it (I couldn’t help joking to his friend—the guy who sells metal-work in the shop right across from his and comes and sits with him sometimes when business is slow, usually in the afternoons—about our exchange that’d just happened “hey, it’s not like I can say anything, now can I—after all, he owns the shop—I’m just a paying customer” to which they both laughed)… I don’t know why but I always have this fear that someone’s out to get me, and I’m able to talk it out with myself most times, but very rarely some people say something to me that ends up rubbing me the wrong way , and I take a LOOONG time to recover from it…
