The razor’s edge

Raj Kadyan

WE recently spent a few months abroad. As part of my pre-departure preparations, I had taken a haircut. However, thick hair being a genetic legacy, and keeping it short an Army habit, I needed a chopping off after a few weeks. Then in London, staying with the son, I found a salon — much humbler than he patronised — and landed there on a sunny afternoon. All chairs being busy, I awaited my turn.

The roomy hall was typical of a salon. Yesteryear film stars looked down from wall posters. A radio played jazz music. The centre-table was littered with dog-eared, grimy magazines.  

A chair fell vacant. The client rose with his hair stiffly spiked. I shuddered to think if this was the salon’s signature work. The maestro, in his spotless apron, tried to put me at ease. “Hi, I am Vito,” he said effusively. “Hi.” My response was muted. “How are you today?” “I am good.” “Ah,” he asked, “do you live in the US?” “No,” I said, “but I have just returned after a month-long stay there.”

“I knew,” he said, “that expression is an American brag. We Britons are modest not to talk of our being good.” I considered quoting one of his country’s greats about there being something to be modest about. But considering that Vito held the razor and I was unarmed, a national slight was best eschewed.

“How would you like your hair cut?” he asked. Back home, I would have merely said “four weeks” and the barber would have understood that the hair should regrow to its present length in that duration. But I was not sure if the barbers have a global vocabulary, even though their propensity for gossiping is apparently universal.  

“Normal,” I said vaguely, hoping it did not mean ‘spiking’. Grasping a tuft of my hair between his fingers, he asked, “This short?” I said fine, without comprehending.

He then began to sheer. I missed the reassuring sound of the razor being sharpened on an extended arm. Instead, all I heard was an electric whirr as he began his operation. God bless the Indian barbers who still draw their power from the elbow. 

Vito’s hands and fingers moved with the grace of a ballet dancer and the speed of a bank teller. As he did so, he made small talk. “We are having some good weather.”

Why Britons can never keep weather out of their conversation always intrigues me. “And aren’t we lucky it isn’t raining?” 

In less than 10 minutes, Vito was done. I missed the mini-massage that his Indian trade-mates throw in for free. “There you are,” Vito declared with satisfied finality, as I looked at my scalp somewhat disapprovingly, bared almost to the maculae. 

“Much easier to manage now,” he remarked, removing the paper napkin from my collar cuff. If short hair was meant to provide ease, Vito himself must be leading a troubled life, I mused. 

The bill, moderate by London standards, exceeded over eight haircuts in India. 

On return to India, when I next visited my barber, he almost upbraided me. “Where did you get the last hair cut, sir?”

“What happened, Neelu?” I enquired. Tying an apron around my neck he said with unconcealed disdain, “The right side is cut shorter than the left.” 

Chak de India!