The Follicle Chronicles

Well,

This one's been a long time coming. Recently, I'd felt that most novel experiences that I was trying to have were for the fact that I wanted to write here about them.

Enough of the drone, now about the Follicle Chronicles...

Ever since I was a year old, I had been taken by My Granddad to the family barber. This guy had cared for my grandfather's mane ever since he came to Delhi. Grandpa was a professional photographer who later joined the International Airport Authority and their fire-service. This resulted in him taking a liking for the crew cut. And all through his life, once every 3 weeks, he would get his hair shorn at the altar of the crew cut. My father, the only child, kinda broke the tradition, with long(er) locks that he kept during his college days. He then subscribed to Grandpa's views on the Haircut. And so the crew cut was passed down from Generation to Generation.

So, every 3 weeks, Grandfather led the way with me and my brother in tow to the Barber Shop. It's strategically placed, once you get out of my house, you just take the turn on to a main road and then this shop is right there... That's where the road becomes a T-point of sorts in the local Vegetable Mandi. So there was no way I could tell my Grandpa to deviate (shouting out loud for a chocolate/video game/music cassette) and use another barber. Why would I do so, I wasn't a kid with a fear of the razor, neither was the barber was so hideous that he cast a psychological impression on me. All said, I just had to go in.

Thing was, I hated the crew cut with a vengeance. Grandpa was the father figure and would not yield. The Barber would then start, stopping only when the hair on my head was an inch longer or I would have been Baby Chanakya of the 90's.

My situation in those days were more like this Calvin Strip. It always started like this one, but then the crew cut happened. At least all through my primary and middle school years, I looked like a generic clone, albeit with a Crew Cut. Time passed, my grandfather's advent on his heavenly abode set me free for the only thing that I was deprived of, a decent haircut. I had always been the apple in the eye for the family. Eldest grandson in the family, carried in the lap when a baby and then on the shoulder when older by all my loving cousins. So this hair cut thingy was the last thing missing.

Promptly and as soon as I could, i.e. as soon as I had saved up enough money for a salon haircut, I went. From there on, it was salons all the way.

I did not change barbers unless and until they moved away, so in the last 10-odd years, there haven't been more than 3-4 blessed souls who've had the opportunity to work their magic on my scalp. Fact was, I hated the drill of going to a new salon, each time I did, the new barber always started with the "where do you normally go?/What do you do?" routine, followed up by their suggestion on my portfolio of skin problems that afflicted me since early teenage.

So, it was my barbers and me, and life was going on. The Crew cut barber, through all these years, had gone from being a thin, anemic looking boy to a mature, french-bearded man who passed me on the streets and always nodded as I did unto him. He never carried the animosity of the lost customer thingy for me, and we knew who the other was, even though too much water had passed under the bridge since then.

Well, to cut the really long story short, this last weekend, once I'd slept after a 36 hour no-sleep sojourn, I woke up at 12 in the afternoon to see that my busy social calender afforded me nothing but the opportunity to buy books and get a haircut. It was the beginning of the summer and the temperature that day was a cool 39 degrees, with the first loo billowing. The only problem was, I didn't feel like driving and there wasn't a Salon in the vicinity that swiped plastic in exchange for running clippers, scissors, combs et al through my head. Books were a similar problem.

Well then I remembered about the new-fangled Teksons Bookshop in the local market. I started on, reaching there, only to find them shutting shop 10 minutes early for Lunch. Since I'd already started from home on a mission, I had to get the Book (Which was for a gift for a colleague going away). So, I had about 30 minutes to kill. And the haircut was in the offing. So I thought, let's go for the adventure today. Back to THE Barber.

Gliding through the local alleys, I was soon at the barber shop, it had now shifted a few stalls down the line. It no longer afforded the precious view of the road, where the barber constantly awaited new customers while taming my hair; he could fully concentrate on the job at hand. He was more than a little surprised to see me.

You see, the last time I had left his shop, I was a fresh-faced 7 year old, merely 4-5 feet tall. To have me 15 years later, enter his domain at a straggling if not baffling 6'3" was stupendous to say the least. He isn't the kind of person who's awed by the personalities of yonder and yore, all the big seths and Banias of the market still come to him, I was still little change, and then some.

He was shaving someone when I went in, so I had the chance to check out the changes while I waited. Things had kept up with the times, with grey creeping in his side-locks, he would have looked in place at any corporate office with his distinguished looking french beard, if not for the deal life had dealt him.

The shop had remained just about the same, walls adorned with calenders from the local shops from this year and previous ones, a small water cooler abutting the wall in front.

Sitting in the chair, the 1st thing he had me do was slouch downwards, for this was no ergonomic sofa in the making, but the default barber's chair. It was your Windows 3.1 in days of the Vista. It was Model T in the days of the Corvette, only it that it isn't something as coveted. As soon as I slouched, the haircut started.

Well, this time, once he'd done up the back of my head (Skin-touch style, as per him), he asked the question that I'd wanted all these years, "How would you want it?"

The rest was all humdrum dribble and all that, but this one question made it all okay.

I've never been a person who's been affected, afflicted or impacted by mental deviations of any kind, identifying phobias and other psychological disorders (I'm sure my closest friends, and parents, and teachers and colleagues and you would differ) rather than having them. So, while this wasn't a unfulfilled adoloscent control mechansim, but the coming of age, that never happened that took place.

It was another thing that my hair, who have a life of their own, reacted strangely to this non-disinfected, slightly worn-edge of his scissors. So, at the end of it all, I looked into the the stained mirror in front of me, and smiled beatifically at my own face for the 1st time in my life. For he had managed to give me the Sadhna Cut, better known to contemporaries as the Jassi look.

Hair gel and a week of hair-growth have taken care of things since then, but the experience was worth it. It's another thing to have your hair crafted using surgical precision instruments, another to have them put into place by a serrated piece of metal.

Now, the reason for doing this to you. I've turned into a literary exhibitionist, showing off what my life is, right here.

And the other reason is Shantaram...

Shantaram is one of my favorite tomes of all time. It's just that it's a thick book with small print, hence it's a little like the Fountainhead, just that the author replaces 3-page long single character dialogues from one character in the Fountainhead to descriptions of the name-place-animal-thing(s) in his environment in Shantaram. And I've gifted about 5 copies to my friends.
All of them complain that it's the densest (if their's a word) thing they've ever read.

If you've managed to read through this and reach here, my work's done. My faith in mankind has been restored. If people in this world are willing to read through 1200 word essays on haircuts, we will continue to exist as a species. Lack of Curiousity will not claim us; giving in to androids, politicians, spiritual gurus, greed, crime, corruption will be resisted still.

Peace be upon you. You've accomplished something today. You've read the Follicle Chronicles. Discuss it the next time you have coffee with your friends. Add this to your resume and see your career grow in leaps and bounds.

Ciao