When I was young, and growing up with my grandmother, the last Sunday of every month was ‘hair-cutting day’ and come what my grandmother would ensure that I had my hair cut in the early morning.
The ‘barber’ as he was then called was an old man who came to our house as the first rays of the Sun hit Earth with his tools wrapped in a brownish white cloth. A wooden plank was placed in the courtyard away from the enclosure which held the ‘tulsi’ plant and I was asked to sit down on it wearing only my short pants (without a shirt on). The barber was an emaciated old man wearing a lungi and baring his chest. I hated being subject to this hair cutting treatment as I felt like a sacrificial goat waiting for the sword. The barber had clippers (now extinct) and with this he ran through my hair like a lawn mower across a lawn. The process was painful and as and more hair was shorn off the blade cut deeply into my tender scalp sending waves of agony through me. To avoid this, I kept jerking my head and this made it worse as the blades nicked my scalp. The barber would scream invectives at me and would order me to keep still. As a last resort he would place my head between his legs in a vice like grip and continue to shear away. I would shout blue murder and this would bring my grandmother running to see whether I was really being killed. She would admonish the barber and ask him to be more gentle and at the same time order me sternly to keep still; she would remind me not to enter the house after the hair cut but to go around the house to the backyard and take an oil bath in the water which would be boiling in a brass cauldron.
The barber would be finally finished after about 20 minutes and I would get up looking very much like a cleaned chicken about to be put into the pot. My body would be covered with hair which would add to my irritation. I would give my blackest scowl to the barber and in my heart would consign him and his ilk to the farthest regions of hell. He would gently smile at me, while gathering his tools and tell me ingratiatingly that he would meet me again next month. I would yell at him and run to the backyard for my bath.
Now about half a century later, I call up my barber (oops sorry — my hairdresser) for an appointment next Sunday at 11 am and present myself at the hour at his air-conditioned saloon; soft music soothes my nerves and I sink myself into the deep leather upholstery of the swivelling chair. A person drapes a laundered white sheet smelling faintly of detergent across me and covers my neck with tissue paper; he takes out scissors and a comb and gently, begins snipping at the hair extremities. I sink into a gentle nap only to be awakened by the hairdresser who holds a mirror behind me and asks me whether this is fine or should it be shortened further. I nod, conveying that this okay. The white sheet and the tissue paper are removed. I step out looking and feeling neat and spruced up.
What a difference half a century has wrought on the art of hairdressing I muse. The outcome is the same — but 50 years back, what cost Re 0.25 today costs Rs 150. That is the difference!!