barber and haircut!!!

Its been a while since a barber has touched my hair. In past 2 years, I have visited a saloon only once!!

No, no.. I am not planning to act in Aamir Khan's 'Sun- The Rising'.

After we (Sunil, Naren, Deep, me) came to Clemson, we realized that cutting hair outside every 20 days would be a very expensive affair ($12 for a haircut??.. nah....$12 x 50.....600 Rupees... mad or what!!!... was our first reaction..eddam desi eshtyle). So we thought of trying it out at home. First few haircuts were a disaster (invariably we would wear a cap for next 15 days... our apartment had around 10 caps at one point... as everyone would need one) but slowly we improved ourselves. Apart from a few hiccups:

One fine day Naren messed up Deep’s haircut with a huge patch at a very inconvenient spot. After that Deep hasn’t yet dared to try it out again. He prefers a professional barber instead. On another fine day, I by mistake created a dent on Sunil's head and for a month he was a bald headed gentleman.

Apart from that its been a smooth and fairly exciting experience. After Naren moved out, it was just Sunil and me who would cut each others' (upper) hair. I guess we have become fairly professional barbers now... and reliable too. It’s been one memorable experience, and one more very useful thing I learnt in life after coming to Clemson. Sunil is any day better than a professional barber.

The reason I remembered all this: I badly needed a haircut a couple of weeks back. I finally decided to go to a barber as sunil was busy with his thesis defense and I didn’t want him to spend his time cutting hair. So, I went and I almost entered the barber shop...

Man, I was shit scared to let someone else cut my hair. I came out of that shop almost running.

I am going for a conference in LA, California in couple of weeks and I DONT want to be bald at the conference. I am used to give instructions in hindi... and cant simply imagine telling an american "cut short from sides, shorter from backside and slightly long on upper head... i want slope also"... what if he doesn’t understand what exactly I want??... and what if I dont get a satisfactory haircut?? ..."slightly short on this spot....and this much here... and that much there"... nah.

Finally requested Sunil to take some time out, and thankfully he obliged.

I dont know how long I can avoid a barber... as we are unlikely to be in Clemson for too long now... but I will be extremely scared when I enter the barber's shop next time... whenever that happens.