Snip, Snip...OUCH! Snippets from Kerala...

There is nothing as exasperating as a visit to the "New India" (name changed) barbershaap [that is to discount a couple of alternate disaster scenarios like watching a Jean Claude movie with the chunky hero sporting pink shorts ... which i happened to catch on AXN today] because unlike other mallus, I'm utterly left-handed when it comes to making small talk with my regular holiday tonsure artist (or any other barber for that matter). I'm usually so hopelessly tongue tied in the barbershaap that it sometimes leads me to think that if there was a single super power I could wish for, it would be the ability to make meaningful conversation with the coiffeur. Now surely all of you must have spent a few hours after watching a DC-comics-inspired movie, wondering how the "scale-walls-with-bare-hands" power or the "look-through-walls-and-clothing" power would change your life forever, so you might realise how much this means to me :P.

Now, if you know me as the LH featured on this blog, you'd also be aquainted with my obsessive repulsive disorder to analyse every feeling/trait/reaction to its ruin. Several tongue-tied minutes into my introspection, while still on the extremely comfortable reclining chair of my slightly upmarket Men's saloon in the ageing attukal shopping complex (There i gave it away!..:P) in Trivandrum getting my Rs. 110 haircut, I arrive at the explanation and a smile spreads across my face. Which of course is quickly wiped off as the barber misinterprets the smile and returns a queer one and starts off giving me an extremely butch hairdo. ahh...I digress.

Coming back to the central theme of this section of my post, the reason for this behavioral inadequacy (the one that causes me to lock up in between haircuts...now where is your mind at?) can, in my opinion, be traced back to the childhood vacations I spent in God's own country, where you spend time idling your brain cells to the point of atrophy and (are forced/lured/cajoled to) visit the local "krishna" barbershaap, complete with all modern amenities like a vaccuum tube radio, bladeless razors and of course the ubiquitous Cuticura talcum powder. To this day whenever I think of mallu barber shops, the same old familiar fragrance tickles my senses (And "Navaratna tel" when I think of North indian ones but thats another story). My grandpa used to drag me, a difficult lil nipper, to this very primitive place where he charged 20 bucks for a haircut (as opposed to the 12 buck ones i used to get several years later at college) and I in line with my very own interpretation of the non-cooperation movement used to give one hell of a ime to the barber, tossing my head about in glee as the barber tried in vain to get me steady for a proper cut. My ancestor, the ingenuous man that he was, came up with a very interesting plan One, that would in the years that followed turn me into the most timid creature that ever set his butt on a barber's chair. He told me, that if I didn’t stay still during a haircut, the barber might in fact cut off a significant amount of flesh from my face. "By accident of course", he used to say. And went on to explain with his trademark matter-of-factness how he hoped that it would be the ear lobe, as I had no use of it anyway. Brrrrr...

So leave alone talking, Since then I stay as still as a sphinx when i get my mop trimmed. Today, whenever i sit on the chair facing the large mirror I feel the same old dread and imagine my earlobe being chopped off... A dread, that i resolve to one day pass on to my children if I have any...

Its not that funny...really...

L. Hyena
B.Tech and now @ home