Getting haircut is nothing short of a great incident in every kids life. Some may have good experiences and pleasant while for majority of them, the barber with their scissors, making that tickety-ticket sound and the half blade razor that makes a scary appearance towards the end, scratching the skin behind the ears and right over the backside of the neck, above all one cutting plier like contraption that is used for plucking out hair to its lowest root (also called as summer cut) - to even think of those days makes me shudder. Odeon saloon, which was right at the entrance of our street, used to be the venue for so many of those painful memories. It was a 10 by 10 room with two rolling chairs, that rivalled the hot seat in KBC. The elderly man who cut our hair (i am particular in not mentioning it as styling for every single one of us who ever had hair cut during our school days ended up being commented as having had our hair cut in a rats hole (eli bondhu)) was quite scary and would scold whenever the head was not tilted in his favor to perform his hit job on our head. I don't remember the first time i ever went for a haircut on my own and ever since that started to happen, the comment would always be that it could've been cut shorter or i had come back wasting two hours in the saloon without even having my hair cut(!!). I think the ultimate step when a kid becomes adult is achieved when they go on their own to a saloon and get their hair cut in a less painful way.
I took junior to a nearby saloon, much to his dismay, for he has a preferred one where he has been visiting for couple of years now and is quite fond of the surroundings. They give small gifts to the kids and junior considers it as his prize for having his hair cut. Someone has to stand next to him with the Youtube On, with his favorite cartoons or ganapathi songs playing, distracting him from what is happening over his head. When we decided to change the saloon to someone close by to the house, he was quite terrified. I could identify with that fear, but understanding that at some point he will come out of it, we took him to the new saloon. After seeing one Ganapati photo next to his seat, he became more confident. With one eye on the photo and other eye looking at me, he somehow managed to get out of that ordeal. The end result was nothing short of a half broker coconut as a head gear kind of hair style and luckily for me, he is yet to understand those nuances. I saw two other kids, possibly in tenth class, who were bullying the barber guy into giving them funky hairstyles. One look at them is enough to confirm the free rein in their home and it doesn't show their parents in good light for having allowed such roughish hair style with which they may be going to their school. It made me realize, why my parents were strict when it came to similar situation and i couldn't thank them any less for ensuring i didn't end up anything different.
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The male of the species is eternally condemned to feel unhappy about his hair. For the first half of life, the concern is that there is too much growing and that it has to be styled just exactly right. For the second half of life, the regret is that there is no hair at all !!!! Of course this doesn't apply to the ever lasting youth of Gilsu :)