The hair on our heads receives a great deal of attention from us, especially if one is very self-conscious of it. The comb, used for styling, cleaning and managing the hair and scalp may not be as old as man, its user, but it is old enough.
Those who have ‘Yul Brynner’ pates seldom concern themselves with combing. Though my hair has long found the pate inhospitable and started saying goodbye and quitting, whatever remains of it needs combing. So, a flat, oblong comb always finds itself lodged in my pocket whenever I’m out of home.
There is more arid zone on my head thanks to desertification. Heads of most men – my near kin – are victims of forehead encroachments. Indeed, an unenviable situation. Upon seeing my balding pate while on a video call the other day, my 4-year-old grandson, living abroad, exclaimed to his mother, “Amma, look how big his forehead is!” As bigness always fascinates children, my sizeable forehead has become a thing of delight to him!
When the Hippy culture was in vogue in the 60s, youngsters wore long unkempt hair, hardly used combs and scarcely visited barber shops for haircuts, making the barbers run for their money. Many shops downed shutters. Thankfully, the movement didn’t last and coiffures found themselves back in business.
Women comb through their hair to catch lice, besides grooming and untangling it. This is akin to the action of our police and paramilitary forces who ‘comb’ the jungles? One often hears news about such ‘combing operations’ in the Northeastern regions for insurgents and in the jungles of Sahyadri for Naxalites. And you can’t forget in a hurry that it was one such operation in the Sahyadris that yielded Veerappan the brigand.
Combing is not welcome everywhere; restaurants forbid it. Whenever one sees a mirror hung above the washbasin, instinctively one’s hands reach for the comb. But the combing ban stares at you fiercely and you can’t help but obey it. When I see such prohibitory notices I recall a line from Nissim Ezekiel’s poem, Irani Restaurant Instructions, ‘Do not comb, hair is spoiling floor.’
In the bygone days, boys did not carry combs with them while going to school. So, during lunch and tea breaks, students who wanted to tidy their hair went to the nearby barbershops. But girls did not have the option of running to barbershops as they were out of bounds for the lasses and there were hardly any ladies’ beauty parlours in those days.
Time was when the English did not hit it off with the Scots. Samuel Johnson, the English essayist, who had an acerbic tongue, which he often brought into play to make fun of the latter, quipped: When they started losing hair the English frittered away their finances for hair creams and lotions. But the stingy Scottish took the hair loss in their stride and made money by selling their combs and hairbrushes at the first sign of balding!
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