Bad Hair Day

I like to believe that i have an eye and an ear for the mundane. Before you start making snooty assumptions, this in no way is a virtue. It just helps you to while away your boredom at places where time passes very slowly, minute after slow minute . I have this habit many of you might also have. Getting a hair cut almost every fortnight, almost that is. For people who are perennially cash starved, a barber's shop is the equivalent of a spa salon or sauna bath. This explains my fetish for this fortnightly ritual.
A visit to a barber's shop can turn out to be a pretty boring ritual if you have to contend with a queue of people waiting for their turn. And this is what happened yesterday. A lesser mortal might have given up to return some other day. I decided to persist.
Before i describe what happened hence, i would like to paint a mental picture of the barber shop for your convenience. This shop happens to be the one of the very few in the vicinity of my college campus. Needless to say, poverty stricken students who cannot even afford a peep inside Jawed Habib's gay-but-plush salons, throng this shop in large numbers. The shop has three "rotating chairs" opposite a large mirror. For those who have to wait, there is a large table behind the chairs where five people can sit comfortably and eight people can just fit in when the queue is really large. There are three ceiling fans. Out of these three ceiling fans, one runs at full throttle while the other two groan atleast four times while completing even one rotation. There is a brown colored cupboard in one corner of the room which i presumed was used to store clothes. It was only yesterday that i discovered that it actually is a "television with sliding doors" straight from the 80s when Weston had a monopoly in India. I won't blame you if you haven't heard of Weston. When that television is switched on, you won't get a picture but the raster scan patterns are clearly discernible along with the kind of shrieking sounds that are so common to black and white war movies. Thankfully, there is a radio with a better audio quality. By the time you have successfully managed to figure out which song is being played, the song is already over and you move onto the challenge of cracking the next song. There is a whole assortment of magazines which can fit in the archives of any national museum. There is an issue of sportstar where Deep Dasgupta is rated as the best wicket keeper India has ever produced. Just for your information, he doesn't even figure in the Ranji Trophy squad of Bengal cricket team now. Then, there is this issue of Outlook where the writer goes gaga over Mamta Bannerjee. Mamta Bannerjee, who? Of course, there is an issue of filmstar from yesteryears featuring Mamta Kulkarni on the coverpage in some itsy bitsy costume. I did tell you i have an eye for the mundane.
My attention is distracted from the magazines to the cries of a little girl whose turn has come and who apparently doesn't want to get a hair cut. In an attempt to jump the queue, i volunteer to go ahead and take the girl's place and give the girl an apparently gratifying smile. Only to be silenced by her mother's mind-your-own-business-you-pervert look. Meanwhile, one of the barber is busy attending a call for the last 1o minutes leaving behind a host of harried customers who have already gotten down to the mother-sister level of abuse. Reluctantly, i also join in. The person next to me decides to read the same issue of sportstar that i am reading. So he almost climbs on me in an attempt to keep pace with me. Turning the issue upside down also doesn't help as he adjusts his head accordingly. Defeated, i offer him the issue. He very cordially turns down the offer only to resume reading it again the moment i get back to it. Frustrated, i put that vintage issue of sportstar back in the basket. I look up only to realise that another barber has also left the shop to attend an emergency phone call. This leaves us with only 1 barber and a queue of 7 people. The league of mother-sister gentlemen has already left the shop by now. Left behind are peaceful denizens like me who have enough time to spare. To add further twist to the tale, the only barber left behind seems to be a novice. He keeps fumbling with his instruments and each time he does that, the girl resumes her crying. Realising that i am the last person in the queue, my patience starts to wear thin. I politely ask the barber about the prospect of the return of his colleagues. The barber mumbles back something in Marathi and there is a huge chorus of laughter from everyone inside the shop. Laughter is cathartic. Even the girl stops crying and bursts into peals of laughter. My plea to translate it into Hindi draws another uproar of laughter followed by applauses from the more excited ones. Ego bruised, i get up and leave the shop. Having walked a few steps, i look back. There is even more laughter. And the two barbers are still busy on their phones.
Now, i know how the disgusting habib became The Jawed Habib. He values customer loyalty. The other barbers don't.