hairy tales

Vasuki has written about his barber shop experiences. Reading it brought back memories of my visits to the beauty parlor. As I started to jot it down, I realized that I had a lot to narrate.

So I have divided it into three parts.

Hairy tale 1- the “Chinese cut” days

As a kid I remember visiting a beauty parlor called “the Golden Flower”. It was run by a Tibetan immigrant. Back then most kids sported a hair cut called the “Chinese cut” and so did I. That cut was able to give any kid a dumb look.( See pic for further proof)

I don’t know about others…but as a kid...I had a deep attachment towards my hair. I wanted to grow it long like Rapunzel. But my mom had other ideas. So every visit to golden flower would result in my throwing a tantrum. The hair dresser would hand me a lollipop to mollify me .It was not just getting my hair cut…I was used to the bribe too. You be a good girl-no lollipop. You cry- you get a lollipop! And then you can settle down and enjoy the sticky sugary feel of it while the smiling woman chopped your hair off. This is how as a kid you learn the powers of manipulation. After coming out, I would proudly show my colored tongue (anybody who has eaten a lollipop knows what I’m talking about).For an hour or so I would pretend to be a dragon and would pop my tongue out at my mom.

Till my high school, I wore my hair long. So I never really went to the beauty parlor. One hot afternoon, I got so fed up with my waist length hair…that I went to the parlor and asked her to cut it short. For the next 9 years I wore my hair very short. Boy cut, blunt cut, mushroom cut , veg cut-been there done that. That meant regular visits to the beauty parlor. Golden Flower had closed and I experimented with a few beauty parlors. In one such parlor...the woman almost cut my ear talking about some carpet sale…but then that’s a whole different story!

Finally as any fashion conscious girl in Mysore I ended up going to “Kim Fa”.

Hairy tale 2: The Kim Fa chronicles

Now a guy goes to the salon...gets his hair cut, maybe an oil massage, exchanges pleasantries...and goes back home. But...it’s very different for women. During my college days I would go to the beauty parlor with my friend. It meant going there and waiting for hours; noticing the ‘characters’….reading gossip magazines...discussing new fashion trends...and generally commenting on every other women in the room.

Kim was a Tibetan lady who owned Kim Fa. She was an amazing character. She was what I would call “Vijay Mallya” among hair dressers! A very enterprising woman with a sharp business acumen…she was also an amazing story teller. She was flamboyant and irritatingly chirpy. But behind the empty smile…you could see her eyes size you up…and deal with you likewise.

I have seen her convince a college student that Mehendi being herbal and natural was bad for your hair. One should only use L’Oreal!

But she surpassed herself when she suggested a fat kid’s mom to make the kid drink lots of hot water. Her logic was- Just like you use hot water to take out oil from your hair...drinking hot water will melt the fat inside you!!!

The beauty parlor had a lot of Tibetan woman who as hair dressers would roam around with expressionless faces; their faces spoke of weariness... One can’t have a sunny outlook towards life when one waxed and threaded women day in and day out.

A beautician is not only a master of beauty tricks…she is also a great communicator. She can hint, smile...and giggle and in just that give away a world of information. While they cut your hair, they are expected to keep you entertained…give you the latest gossip, share beauty tips...and listen to your laments if any.

There would always be a long waiting list in Kim Fa. We would sit and read Cosmopolitan and giggle at the deliciously scandalous topics…and listen to the tall yarns woven by Kim for her gullible customers. And the broken English and Hindi of these women…were things sitcom laughs were made of! None of them spoke in Kannada. They would rather make fools of themselves speaking in English and not make sense than talk in Kannada!

To sit and watch women and the vain attempts to make them pretty is at once comical…and endearing. The waxing, bleaching, perming, threading to impress a man...who wouldn’t notice the difference (he will definitely notice the bill;P)…is pathetic and yet talks so much about feminine hopes.

Hairy Tale 3: A hair cut in fellini dream

Once I started working in Bangalore, I shifted to a smaller beauty parlor. I could no more afford to spend whole evenings waiting and watch other women getting fleeced. This place was in Chamundipuram...an old ramshackle place. It looked more like an abandoned studio specializing in horror movies. A poster of a very fat Manisha Koirala and a very dumb looking Sonali Bendre picture adorned the entrance. If you were undaunted by the impressive bulk of overtly made up Manisha and entered the parlor...you would notice the oldest surviving piece of furniture-a sofa of unrecognizable color. It must have been lying there from Ice ages...at least all the stains seem to suggest that. Standing beside it were two huge empty aquariums. Not too far fetched to imagine that tenants of these aquariums are now in fish heaven. On the other side are two mannequin heads. Some person with a taste for horror movies had drawn black eyes and macabre lashes on these dolls.

You would then enter into another room. The walls of this place had pages from fashion magazines glued to them. Now since these magazines were from the 80s…the hairstyles looked comical and bizarre. All pictures evoked one of the two emotions-Fear or Amusement.

Then you would see a curtain...and you knew that in biological warfare...this curtain would be your weapon of choice.

This beauty parlor was run by two women (they were not the owners). One of them was a plump Tibetan who was the main stylist. She gave the best haircuts...and the massages…blissful! She had worked in five star hotels...and I do not know why she chose to retire to this obscure parlor. She had an impertinent assistant who gossiped non stop about everyone and everything. From what Sonia Gandhi thinks to what the watchman does in his free time-she had the dope on everything! I spent almost every Saturday afternoon..getting an oil massage and listening to the fat woman’s and her assistant’s world views.

Having such a set up...it’s only natural that these women didn’t have a large clientele. So they earned their pocket money by mailing out newsletters. Their work was to glue the stamps and mail them. So many Saturday evenings I would go for my hair massage, I would see them gluing stamps on the newsletter. Sometimes, in the middle of an oil massage, smell of oily pulav would torture my nostrils. It meant that the assistant was emptying her lunch box.

But the hot oil massages! My friend who was shocked when I first took her there…soon became a fan of the oil massages too. The fat lady had soothing supple, soft hands. She gave the best haircuts. I had the option of getting great hair care in a dingy looking place or get mediocre attention in a stylish place; I didn’t think twice. Most women may purse their mouth and look down upon such a parlor. It might not have been fancy…but it had atmosphere. It didn’t have the sterile look of some interior decorator’s imagination. Instead it constantly surprised me….there was always some scary picture I had not noticed before or a big cobweb with a spider doing yoga…or some very funny sounding beauty merchandise.

That’s what I miss most about India…these nook and corners….tawdry, crude and cheap but charming.

These places have a life force of their own. I miss the vacuous talks of the assistant who would exclaim at silly things and didn’t mind eating pulav in front of the customers. I miss the fat woman who spoke broken Kannada…and gave me beauty tips. But most of all …when I see gigantic people in shopping malls in sub urban California…I get a very strong urge to go over and suggest drinking hot water!