‘Mane’ Kampf

At the outset I will state – Read on at your own free will, this one might rake up painful memories from the past for some of you.

One of the deadliest dictators that one had to contend with as a boy was the neighbourhood barber. The man had his own mind, did what he felt was right and could hurt you in several ways. Invite his wrath and you could be looking at spending the next month as the laughing stock in school.  Every month I had to take this much hated trip to Venkatesha Barbar (sic) Shop. (They were called barber shops before the evolution to hair dressers, to hair dressing saloon to unisex beauty saloon). It was this small shop with three torture chairs and a gallery for spectators which was a wooden bench. Aptly the chairs were covered with red rexine and had an extension at the back rest which was padded and ‘T’ shaped like the top of the crucifix. 

My nemesis was a dark, burly, unsmiling assassin called Samy (I guess it was a variant of Swamy, but Sammy definitely evoked scenes from Godfather). My dad had left standing instructions with him that he needs to cut it as short as possible every time. He would take out this thick yellowing cloth, smelling of mothballs and tie it tight around my neck as he sharpened his sharp knife on a strap of leather. Snip, snip he would scissor away, and the bits of hair fell all over my face. It used to poke me but I wouldn’t dare to lift my hand from beneath the cloth to brush them away. He would give me dirty looks if I did and wait till I pulled it back under the cloth. I did steal looks at him in the mirror without him knowing. He had this silver torture device that had a handle and a mouth like piece with teeth. This was the mechanical predecessor of the Braun electric shaver. I am sure a lot of people will cringe when they remember this. He used to start clicking from the back of the neck upward and then yank it off at the middle….argghhhhh. As time passed I got bolder and I asked him timidly to stop cutting it too short and he would ignore me. The day I looked him in the eye and said, ‘Medium cut’ and he nodded, I knew I was well on my way to manhood. 

My brother by then had graduated to ‘Select Hair Saloon’ on Brigade Road. It was somewhere near the present Pizza Corner. He told, us juniors, stories about how one had to wait in a visitor’s room and would be then escorted into a cubicle where the deed was done. There were three famous styles – Step Cut, Bachchan Cut and Bruce Lee Cut. After much pleading mom let me go there for my next hair cut. The man was polite and blow dried my hair and asked me to return after a bath so that he could ’set’ my hair. I followed his instructions like mom would follow Dr. Lokanath’s instructions to pour that vile, dirty purple ‘mixture’ down my throat every six hours during a bout of fever. I was so proud of my Step Cut and bought a curling comb which was the biggest necessity. I have hurt my ears trying to get the damn hair to cover my ears which it did well when it was wet and then would go apart as soon as I reached school. Darn, it was so embarassing.

Select was pulled down years ago and my hair has thinned but that moment when I took on Samy is still fresh in my mind.