The Case of the Missing Barber

It is Sunday which means that it is the day of rituals. Sundays are probably the only day which is bound by specific activities which are never done on any other day. I  add “probably” for times they are changing.

Every month there is one Sunday which I look forward to with anticipation. On Saturday evening, father will announce in front of the family of tomorrow’s plan. Of course there is nothing new compared to other days, excepting a visit to the local barber.  This meant that one had to get up earlier than usual. Father’s belief has always been that the earlier you get to the barber salon the better it is. The barber is fresh and being the first customer all his implements are of course properly washed and clean

I remember when I was a kid that we had homing barbers. These were like pigeons who would come visiting every month for a community haircut. Right from grandfather, his brothers, father his brothers, my cousins and me – the barber would get a bonus break. 20+ heads with 1 single visit. Which meant that as a barber he did not have to go and work elsewhere on that particular Sunday. All he needed to do was to bring in his blades, combs and scissors and a biryiani packet. It was his Field Day !!!

We never let barbers inside the house. There was a designated spot in the garden and the handyman would bring out a wooden chair. The honours would go to the granddad who will be up and about and get his thing done first. The sequence was purely based on descending age and that meant we kids ended up last sitting on the hairy chair with a carpet of black underneath. There was no water sprays or hair dryers. The barber would take some water in his hand, slap it on your head and off his scissors went snip snip. No questions were asked on the style. All of us had 1 single haircut. The elders had a medium haircut and the youngsters short (read Kutti Mottai). We had to run through the backyard after the haircut, enter the bathroom outside the main house, wash away our dirty sins before coming into the house. Granny would stand in the doorway and slap a bit of Rasayana Podi on our heads and rub it in – “will not get cold”!!!

Fast forward a little bit. We moved into an apartment complex in Madras. Yes it was called Madras at that time and to this day the name brings about a flutter in one’s heart. The barber salon was walking distance from the house and one needed to walk through the house to take a bath. Gone were the stringent norms of Shuddam. My father would take me and go to the salon on Sundays. It so happened that we were there on most of the visiting Sundays ushering the barber and helping him lift up the rolling shutters. He would be apologetic for his late coming at 6:30am but then father would dismiss it with a smiling nod completely comprehending the time difference between our ancestral home and Madras. Daylight savings was the in thing !!!. The usual routine changed into a little spray bottle, scissors offering a cropped cut and the blade giving a perfect “U” at the nape and your side burns perfectly chiselled away. I was offered a plank to sit up precariously perched on the chair arms and a dirty black cloth wrapped around to save me from the offending hair

As I grew up and started visiting the salon on my own in Bangalore, it became part of the same ritual reminding me of the memorable times with father and grandfather. The salon owner was Balu, a short stout person with large hands and nimble fingers. Having grown up on a regime of waking up early, I used to wait for Balu to open up the shutters. Strangely my affinity for salons with rolling shutters were persistent. Balu would open up the salon, pick up a couple of benches from inside and put it outside the salon and would start the cleaning. I would patiently sit on the bench and the paperboy would happily pass on the day’s fresh paper. “Enna Sir, Haircutta ? “ was his usual one-liner with a chuckle. The chaiwallah would pedal in and stop in front of the salon and Balu and I would share a cup of sweetened tea. I am a coffee aficionado and anything other than filter coffee was relegated to a term “Pathram kazhuvina thanni”. The radio would be switched on and MS in her lilting glory serenading the lord to get up, the incense sticks lit and a little prayer offered before Balu would welcome me to the chair. No questions asked and it was the usual cropped haircut. Of course a few years later, Balu would just take the shavette, lather my head and a complete tonsure was on. My visits stopped from being monthly affair to once a week. Soon a couple of regulars would come in for a shave and the four of us would have a go at the Indian and Karnataka politics. Balu would have given Arnab a run for his money with his sharp comments and witty retorts on the current situation. He would also share anecdotes of his family, the street dogs and the general happenings in the neighbourhood.

Today, I have moved on from the earlier house being a sort of a nomad searching for that elusive dreamhouse in this IT capital and have lost contact with Balu. I have a 7 year old son and thanks to the missus he has been to a plethora of luxury salons and beauty parlours for his haircut. And how does he get it cut, short on the sides and a touch on the top is what he says. The day is not consistent and neither is the barber – oops hair stylist. There is no conversation aplenty and the sounds are relegated to piped music of Kenny G. Maybe the saxophone does help the hair to stand a bit more straight and for the stylist to cut faster. There is no combs and the scissors are used to do last minute snips. A plethora of machines with No 2, No 3 and No 4 fittings and tissue rolls snapped around the neck so that you can choke to death welcomes you. Stylists walkaround with holsters full of equipment making you feel like you are in the Wild Wild West and they are going to cut your shoot you before the haircut. Hands now are swathed in rubber gloves and it makes you feel as if you are in an operating theatre. There is no sense of belonging and you are treated as another customer and not the only one. And most importantly, they do not have any knowledge of 7am in the morning. These salons claim to provide you with an experience of your lifetime, but then what can match the camaraderie of Balu and his scissor hands.

The Times they are changing

December 2018 was a month that had a huge bearing on my life. October of that year, I traveled to North America on a project. It was a journey undertaken with a lack of interest. No, I must say with a large amount of lack of interest. Not that the work was boring. In fact it was a great piece of work and a great set of clients I went to meet. However the joy of visiting a new city in NA was missing. Interestingly enough i had gone to Dallas and that was one of the cities i wanted to visit thanks to a lot of Louis L ’Amour and J.T. Edson in my formative years. However, landing in Dallas did not make my eyes agog and breath go gasping. I had a feeling of having lost something in those weeks that i was there.

It also proved to be a time where i spent weekends ruminating about what i am doing and what i wanted to do. I guess, in all our lives there comes a time where we tend to look back and discover that our paths are at a point of divergence. To me this happened in Dallas. The road that i walked on till then was rich with growth and learning. It was filled with a lot of experiences, a lot of knowledge and to me seemed full and enriching. The road in front of me forked. One had a lot of fruits hanging on trees, easy to grasp but they were the same set of fruits. Just that they were bigger in size if you know what i mean. The other road was a bit darker to look at, but there was a whole host of fruits hanging. It was just that they were not apples, but they were still very colorful and waiting to be plucked at. 

I also discovered a sense of loss at that point in time. I could not put by finger on it, but it was one of those things that tugged at your heart, left you a little bit bereft and told a story which was rich but still missing something. I knew then that i had to do something. It was time to change what i was doing and recover the passion that was missing. So onward and about i went and took a big leap. It was a leap in a different direction and i landed into a different court playing a very different game. As i took this leap, one thought crossed my mind. How does on make such a different move where paradigms and work have shifted from the normal and where age becomes a big factor. Some of these questions remain unanswered, but some had answers too. 

BE A CHILD – If you have children you know what i am talking about. A child is probably the most inquisitive being short of a cat. A child never stops asking questions. One needs to remember this. Questions are the bulwark of change. Without questions, how much ever you try to transform you will never be successful. Ask questions. I had a senior colleague in my organization who did this. For every project which got kick started, he would have 30 mandatory questions of which 20 would be run of the mill. The answers were there for all to see. But the other 10 were questions which made the team members open up their mind and look at the project with a completely different view. 

CONTINUE TO BE A CHILD – As we grow older, we start losing the ability to take big risks. We still continue to take risks, but now it is measured and it is not the real big ones. What drives us to change our behavior in such a way. It is all about fear. We are in a stage where fear wraps us to a certain extent and reduces our ability to open and let go. Again, look at your child. Till the time you tell him or her that jumping from the table to the ground might hurt them, they have no idea and they will continue to do it. At some point of time, you have to let go and jump out of the ledge. 

PASSION TO LEARN – The key to any successful transformation is to have a passion in anything you do. Remember the time you were a kid and you played football or soccer as it called on the other side. I am sure some of us were more than ready to play at any time and continue through dusk into the night time. I remember as a teenager, my life revolved around playing football. I would finish up school, rush for a meal or sometimes forget the meal and hit the field. Similarly the other thing that kept me ticking was the stars. I would spend hours together sitting with the astro chart from Hindu and gaze up into the sky every night. One needs to have a kind of passion 

KEEP AN OPEN MIND – A lot of us who go through such transitions approach it with an amount of fear and trepidation. Some of us cross over to the other side while some of us stagnate. We ruminate about our past, how our expectations are and how did the change meet them or not meet them. Unfortunately for us, we end up digging a pit which just manages to go deeper and deeper. Always keep an open mind. Sometimes things don't work out the way you planned. And when that happens the story has always been to take the bull by its horns and shake things loose. I don't believe in that approach. All of us are individuals and just like the fact that our eyes are distinct our reactions too are. I believe that if it does not work out, keep in mind that you have to have given your 100%, then it is time for you to take the tougher call. And therefore, you need to have an open mind. 

YOU AND YOURSELF – Finally, it is a question within you that you need to answer and it is you who have to take the action. Further, you have to be solely responsible for the actions you take. It cannot be any other way

I am now again at a contemplative phase, but now more than ever the clarity is much more and the path is more clearer

Through Little Eyes

Can you ever be like this, caught in a world of your own with the entire world looking at you. You have no clue of what is happening behind you. More so, you don't have apprehensions of people saying anything about what you do.
And that is what your children teach you. I was with my son a few weeks back taking a holiday with the missus in tow. We stopped at a series of steps in the resort and there was a small millipede that was crawling around. My son was in raptures at seeing it and entering the world of the curious cat. He stood there maybe for about 15 minutes watching it go from one end of the step to the other end of the step and that was it. His day was made. He had learned a new thing. Two points came to me at the end of this episode

1. How conscious are we of the people around us and therefore how conscious are we of society. Do we live as free birds removed away from social pressures or do we succumb to the sheep mentality. I guess all of us go through phases in life and being a sheep is just one part of it. We do want to become the lone eagle in the sky, but then for some it is dependence on society that makes us become conformists. We can talk a lot about singularity and how it affects each one of us. But remember one thing that as you thrust more and more on conformism on your children, you reduce their chances of coming out of their shells and discovering the environment around them.
2. The other big question that hit me was that when was the last time i learned a new thing. No, it is not about learning math or physics, but of discovering something new. A child is constantly learning and does so through all of its sensory organs and brains. I noticed a remarkable change in my son, who is all of now 2 years and 8 months. He has become inquisitive and every conversation ends in a "Why" or every other conversation begins with a "Why". Suppose you started with every hour of your day with a "Why", it would mean that by the end of the day you would have learnt at least 10 new things. Now isn't that exciting

Both of these go hand in hand. As you learn everyday, your mind starts deviating from set patterns and starts generating its own pattern and thereby helps you become a Singularity.
Why Gods, Why People
Why Gods in People
Why People in Gods
Why myth, Why reality
If both were inseparable
Where would we be