Amusement at the saloon


It's been quite a while since I blogged and my visit to the barber's this morning gave me the next topic.

I was fourth in queue and trust me, waiting for a haircut is one of the most painful things in life. And Mr. Murphy comes in as promptly as ever, with everyone ahead in queue demanding both a haircut and a shave. Exactly on this day, the second barber doesn't turn up. Drat! What rotten luck!

An effective way to kill time at the barber's is to sift through the pages of the boring local magazines filled with cine masala, linking everybody to anybody, punctuated by a few pages of pictures of gods and godmen, as if they are seeking an apology to all the glorious fibbing on the remaining sheets. The other source of pastime is the highly vociferous transistor, tuned to some FM channel. The latter is even more amusing. Between 6:30 and 7:00 a.m, the songs that are played should bring the heavens right before the listener. And immediately after that, only songs relevant to the god of love are played. The listener, thereby travels through ages while switching over from K.P Sundarambal and The Sulamangalam Sisters to Janaki, Leela, Susheela and L R Easwari to Hariharan and SPB and further down to Karthik, Srinivas and co.

But the most amusing of all sources of entertainment there are the customers themselves. Everyone tries to tell the barber how his head should be brought to shape and the barber agrees nonchalantly. All the latter does is a routine cutting on everyone's outgrowth, but finally, the customer has to leave with whatever mercy the barber shows on him. Some customers who are in the queue cannot resist themselves from looking into the generously wide mirror from different angles with all possible expressions on their faces. They probably are making desperate attempts to admire their own features, but unfortunately, the mirror always seems to speak the truth. Most interesting of them all was a boy around thirteen, who would pull a few twisted tufts of hair on to his forehead and blow them back into position and resembling an australopithecus in the process.

So, I have killed enough time and it's my turn now. Hooray! But the barber dreads my occupying the seat. I am pretty regular there and the barber is aware of my habit of falling asleep after surrendering my head to him. I love the look on the barber's face. Good luck buddy! Thanks to you, I shall be losing some headweight. :-)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No comments

It was a murky Saturday afternoon and I joblessly ventured into watching a 'great' movie on SUN TV starring the little superstar, "Simbhu". I affectionately prefer calling him "Sombhu" for very obvious reasons. The movie was called "Kaadhal Azhivadhillai"(Love can never be destroyed). That is a misnomer I am sure for one's love for movies does get destroyed on watching this particular reel. Very fortunately, I only happened to watch the movie after the first half. Dialogues were studded with the least poetic sense and each of it was delivered with the same intensity and expression characteristic of a person suffering from sudden onset of profuse watery stool filled with blood and mucus. Each dialogue had a generous helping of the word 'love' and was punctuated with related words like 'heart', ' death', 'life' etc. The rhyme theme was hilarity personified. It was as if someone had made a list of rhyming words and
Read more

Shelley said 'Spring' but I say 'Summer'

Percy Shelley did remark quite an era ago that when winter came, spring wouldn't be far behind. His poetic rendition on a beautiful fact of life is true, but I would recommend another season to Mr. Shelley and wish he would be / were already reborn in Chennai to appreciate this fact. So, assuming that the then Shelley, now reborn as probably a Selvaraj, is able to telepathically get the import of this blog, I continue... I was in an air-conditioned car today in the middle of a test track about 100 km from Chennai. It was a good start to a day of testing and everything seemed to be going smooth until about 9:30 am. Slowly, the pleasantness of the confined comfort zone started to express the crude reality of the world outside. The day was actually getting as hot as it was bright. I checked the computer to let the reality of the rising mercury sink in and it was about noon when I yelled with joy at seeing 40 deg Celsius. As someone who was brought up in the natural oven that is C
Read more

Blushhhhhhhh

Yes. That's right. Another marriage proposal. This time, it's a girl that I know and who has visited my place in Chennai. As usual, given that my age isn't far from the teens, I said I needed more time. Dad should have replied to the girl's parents supporting my decision. Now where is the problem??? We have a family function in Mysore later this month and I am cent percent sure that I will meet that girl there. How should I face her? Shit man, this is a bad feeling, trust me. I told this to a friend. He said the best way to face the situation is to accept the proposal and get married an year later. But even if I accepted the offer, how would I face my would-be for the first time??? As I type this, my lip edges are touching my ears. I hate this feeling!
Read more