Like most 30-year-olds, I’m also quite set in my ways. I know I’ll be wearing the same plain Jockey T-shirt always, I know I’ll be having idly every morning, and my music playlist has been the same since 1970. The only scope of trying anything new is a hairstylist, that too because there is an assurance that if I end up looking like APJ Abdul Kalam, it can be fixed in just one month, which includes a two-week period of being made fun of by friends.
Here are all the hairstyles people from my generation and I have tried and been ridiculed over the years.
Mushroom cut/Army cut or “Dippa cutting”
This haircut is never chosen; it’s always forced because you were probably in 2nd grade and your parents decided your style statement, which basically is: you are my child, and you are always good looking to me, hence I don’t need to put further effort into making you look good. This haircut was never made fun of because most of the kids had the same hairstyle and the mocking part of the brain had not yet developed.
Dil Chahta Hai
In 2001, Aamir Khan played Akash in Dil Chahta Hai, the first movie we as a generation saw about friendship and coming of age with music that still plays when I reach Goa. But the biggest contribution of this movie was that, for the first time, we all felt the desire to get those three wickets on our foreheads like Aamir Khan did. This is the first time I realised my relatives were uncool as they would often say, “Why did you waste money to have barbed wire on your head? Why just the front of the head? Make all your hair stand up!” Guess what? We did that too.
Being Tere Naam
Tere Naam was a terrible movie — the plot was toxic, the music was sappy, and the box office collection was bleh. The only thing that was relevant in the movie was Bhai’s hair, and it remains so to this day. But what we didn’t realise was that one can never look like Salman Khan by spending Rs 40 at a barber, even though there is a huge poster of him right next to the mirror in the very same hairstyle. Thank heavens for that; if everyone looked like Salman Khan, there would be no black bucks left.
Dhoni hairdo
In 2005, we finally started witnessing stylish cricketers. Till then, we had players like Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, and Rahul Dravid who were only known for their batting. But when MS Dhoni arrived on the scene by scoring 183* against Sri Lanka, we all vowed not to cut our hair anymore. And when Pakistan’s president Parvez Musharraf gave compliments to Dhoni about his hair, we took that as direct orders and embraced that long hair even more. What joy it was to have hair like Dhoni and play gully cricket and not even score two runs.
EPL craze
With cable and Dish TV booming, we had access to watching more sports like football, which changed our lives. With it came all the funkiest hairstyles with strong colours like red and blue. Most of us were in college, and parents had already given up control over our hair, so there was a time when Manchester United was a winning team, and we all looked like roosters studying in college.
And then we all got jobs. As our hair started thinning and becoming scarce due to work pressure, we all went back to the same old Army cut, most of us looking the same and a few of us looking like AP Dhillon.
The Why Junction
Sandesh Johnny
@johnnykasandesh
(This comedian is here to tell funny stories about Hyderabad)
(The writer’s views are his own)