JOIN USCricket, football, politics, movies; a barbershop is the perfect place for banter amidst grooming.
Until I turned into a teenager I had never gone to a barbershop for haircut. Appakutty, a mobile barber, visited our house every month to offer his services. Since ours was a large joint family, his visits yielded several heads! Though the nearby bazaar boasted a couple of barbershops, elders were well at home with Appakutty. So, children had to fall in line.
Appakutty was mild-mannered and soft-spoken. Yet children regarded him as a menace. Perhaps Genghis Khan’s marauding men couldn’t have sown as much panic in the minds of people as the barber had in the children’s. They tried their best to dodge him, hiding themselves in unbecoming places. But soon they had to give in. And each by turn sat in front of him, head bent, as if in abject surrender.
Though knife was part of the barber’s tools, children were spared of it. He was apprehensive of using it on them for they ungainly moved and shook their heads to get rid of the hair that kept falling on their necks and torsos, making the barber’s job harder. Often they pleaded against shortening their hair, but Appakutty ignored their entreaties.
If they continued to move their heads despite repeated warnings, Appakutty held them between his knees as he cut the hair from the back of their heads. This scared them immensely. Cutting children’s hair was quite demanding, yet the barber was paid less for it. ‘Children’s heads are smaller than ours.’ That was how elders justified the underpayment.
The memory of my first visit to a barbershop for haircut is still with me. The barber sat me on a chair in front of a mirror on the wall just above a long table, and wet my hair with a good spray of water. It was a thrilling experience, signifying my freedom from Appakutty.
The present day beauty parlours and hairdressing salons are a far cry from the barbershops of yesteryears. Today, an unassuming downtown barbershop has air-conditioned interior. Owing to proliferation of hair salons, competition has become stiff forcing hair stylists to make their shops more comfortable and attractive. Making the barber lose his temper is fraught with the risk of finding yourself in the same situation as the bestselling author Bill Bryson once saw himself. When he returned home after a haircut, his wife asked, “Did you say anything to annoy him?”
Interestingly, the subjects barbers expatiate on while doing their job vary from area to area, country to country. The barbers in Europe and Americas may be speaking mostly of football. In India, it is about movies and cricket. In the barbershops of Kerala, politics reign supreme. Political discussions are laced with danger, more so when barbers are armed with knives and scissors! Television set that finds itself mounted on the wall may make barbers nearly silent but often customers ask them to be switched off, turning the barbers vocal again. Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist, says a barber who does his work in silence, without drawing a word from your mouth, is no barber at all.