Tuesday, December 8, 2009

The Long and Short of a Haircut!!

If I remember well, it was Mark Twain who once lamented on the ignominy of sitting helplessly in a dentist's chair. The other day I experienced the same sense of powerless subjugation while sitting in the chair of none other than our campus barber.
Somehow these trivial incidents make me think deeper than usual, a skill that can be disturbingly attributed to the amount of free time at my hands. My chain of thoughts centred on my impatience, helplessness and of course, the implications of a bad haircut on the impending placement season performance (how can that be missed!!!).
Ever since a boy reaches class 3 ( this is a hypotheses i am working hard to prove.. for now u can take my word for it!!), he is taught by his environment to be the alpha male, the uber cool and the person in control. Seldom of course are guys taught the opposite... to put complete trust in somebody else to handle the situation. And yet there are so many situations where the alpha male concept goes for a toss. The surgeons are a case in point. Not only does their hand writing beat you so does their talking. All you understand is that you are gonna be cut up and set alright. But then the alpha male is no less troubled by the barber. And you can see the parallels between a surgeon and a barber.

  • You have no clue if they understand your case and are qualified to handle you.
  • You can only pray to God when they wield their instruments
  • You have to bear the brunt of their mistakes
  • Finally, you hear so many horror stories about both professions, doing to something to someone, who was a friend of somebody

Except for the first question, "cutting karna hai?" not many performance guidelines are sought by them and given their destructive nature of work, questions like "zyada chhota ho gaya kya?" are rendered immaterial. Infact delving deeper into the topic (as the barber was closing in on my scalp!!) I started regretting the existence of the barber himself. Our ancients could have certainly done with the advanced surgeons but i hope whoever invented this concept of barber-ism (pun intened) is roasting in the deepest furnaces of hell.
Some of my friends might argue the futility of this post, coming from me, a potential heir to lot of real estate on my scalp (read "baldness"). But again, my ample time and imaginative thinking was already creating arguments as to why this helpnessness in the barber's chair is a sign of other potential problems areas for me.
Suddenly a voice broke out.."Saheb ho gaya, aapke zyada baal nahi hain na, isliye aur chhota nahi kaat sakte!!!" Great, apart from keeping me in mortal fear of disfiguration, this guy also decides to take potshots at my hair (or the lack of it!!).
"Haan haan theek hai..kitna hua?"
I duly paid him the 30 bucks and vacated the chair, just as thoughts of therapy, herbal oils and wigs engulfed the space vacated by the alpha male, barber-ism and other utopian philosophies.

2 comments:

  1. You know what's the rage this year?... Hats.
    (http://progressiveboink.com/archive/calvinhobbes.htm)

    ReplyDelete
  2. The agricultural land over ur scalp is being converted to commercial one, Be Happy...

    ReplyDelete