On his Baldness

         Manly looks are often associated with a glorious mane of hair. Men consider hair a priority when defining their looks, unlike women who consider beauty more holistically covering face, skin, hair, etc. Even the total lack of hair ie. a bald look, is today a male style statement in itself. . . I believe that  hairstyle tells the world what kind of person u are : a rebel ,a  confronter, a freak etc  but  only very  few knows the science and style of  baldness .

Hair cutting centres  over the years have changed a lot in name , ambience and also the style of the hairdressers . Previously these  centres were called  ‘Barber shop’ or 'Saloons' but nowadays it is called ‘Hair Dressing centres’ or 'Beauty parlours'  with cozy and air cooled interiors offering other beauty enhancement procedures also . The old radios which used to  air All India Radio and Ceylon Radio programmes with nostalgic Malayalam and Hindi film songs playing in the background are replaced by giant LED screens with colourful and loud songs .  Yesteryear barbershops were mini libraries where all newspapers and movie magazines were  kept in the waiting area. The present hair dressers are well groomed  but are expensive nowadays and considereing my ever thinning hair, it seems as though  I pay  at least Rs 1 per hair strand!

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As I sat on the Hair Stylists chair , he looked at my face and asked ‘Shaving ?” , I touched my head and said “ "trimming." There was a cynical smile on his face . I closed my eyes as he started to trim the overgrowth of hair on both sides of the head . I suddenly remembered an old Barber  who cut my hair once. My classteacher had given me an ultimatum for a hair cut as it was looking shabby. I had tufts of hair all over the head , which always looked ‘windblown’ ..  In early  80s ,the hair style among the children and youth was mainly BACHAN cut( Like Amitabh Bachan's with left side partition and  hair flowing to the side of the ear in a straight line  which helped in  making us look like an Angry Young Man) and   the BRUE LEE Cut  (like in the movie Enter the dragon where  Bruce Lee had  streaks of hair  on the forehead and the rest of the hair was  allowed to grow backwords with  shorter pony to be cute. .

 NAVY CUT was also popular among my bookish classmates with the  sides and back trimmed, giving a studious  look  . I told the old barber that I wanted the  “Bachan Cut”.  But he, an  old man must have  heard it as “Patte cut” ( means  complete cut  in colloquial Malayalam ) . He  used all his experience to cut my tufts of hairs on front ,side  and back to the rubble . As I opened my eyes after some time , the old barber  asked me whether it was enough . I didn’t have the guts to look at the mirror for a few days.

Time changes and my  hair stylist has stopped asking " Is it enough” as they don't have anything much to cut.