thalaya picchukanam pola iruku!!

"Na sonna mari pannikalai na aathuku varathe!!" My mom screamed at me
before i left. I can imagine what you must be thinking now. That i
would have told my mother that i love a girl, and that i am going to
marry her. If that were the situation, my mother would have killed me,
not yelled at me!!!

Anyways, what i am about to tell is far away from that. Ever since i moved
into our new house about three years back, it has been a nightmare
trying to find a good barber for a haircut. Enna paavam pannineno
avaalukku, each time they spoil my already mediocre looks in a
different way. Since my younger days, i have been wanting to sport
sideburns and a 'mushroom' cut. Thanks to my genes, sideburns is not
a problem. In a typical mushroom cut, the crop is closer around the
sides than at the top. If the step is deep, the rear view of the head
seems like a mushroom.. ;);) Hence the name. A more coarse vesion
of it would be what i call the 'chatti cut' (chatti means earthen pot in tamil). Imagine inverting a pot over ones head and shaving off the
remaining portion. Thats it!! Anyways, i was crazy about the refined version only.. ;);)

What i am going to narrate now is one of my first tragedies. :(:(
A couple of years ago, my family decided to go on a vacation, also
known as pilgrimage to the rest of the world, to an unending list
of temples, most of which people would'nt even have heard of.
My mother then yelled at me saying that i better cut my hair short.
That was when she spoke the first line of this blog..
Ennathan punyam theda ponalum, vaaliba vayasula pattai, naamam ellam
poda thonathu.. scene poda than thonum.. ;);)
I wanted to sport a neat, light mushroom cut. So i went to the barber
nearby and said "anna, mushroom cut pannunga.. step light a pothum."
As if he was Jawed Habib's assistant, he nodded his head. I went and
sat there as an unwitting subject. The clumsy manner in which he
handled the scissors raised some doubts about what was going to happen,
but still i kept mum. He sprayed a litre of water over my head!!
Appo confirm aaiduthu.. thanni thelichu vitutaan!! :(:(
He did what he called a nice n trim haircut and i ended up looking like
'red' ajith!!! Athuku apram 'varutham illa vaalibargal' sangathula irunthu,
naane pinvangiten..

Several such mishaps later, i was fed up and then decided to stop
going for haircuts and grow my hair instead. For those who have'nt seen
me, my hair is pretty wavy. I thought i could grow it upto chin length.
Maintaining long hair is'nt so easy, and i was too lazy to do it.
The last time i touched hair oil was years back, when i broke the bottle.
After a few months of scaring my hostel wing-mates, i decided that the
forest up above my head needed to be deforested. This, being a special
case, i decided not to goto a normal salon-wala and chose a hi-fi chain
of salons. The place itself gave me some courage and confidence that
it wont be a disastrous morning. The 'hair-stylist', as they call
themselves, arrived and greeted me. After i told him what had to be
done, he smiled and asked me to take the hot-seat. I was surprised
when he did not take a pair of scissors. Instead he took out a small
hand-held lawn-mower and ran it several times on my head. At the end of
playing around with some gadgets, he informed me that the job was done.
I was left with some hair on my head, if not none. He had managed to spoil
my coiffure even with hi-fi gizmos!! Someone i knew said that i looked
like an 'egghead'. That was it. I decided to be in thalai-maraivu for a
few days till i had enough hair to do some patch up atleast.. ;);)

I look at this as a drawback of urbanization. Villagers from the most
remote places that don't even exist on the map come to the city thinking
that they would prosper here. The beauty parlor and salon owners employ
them simply because they are cheap and they claim to know the job. Greedy
people!!! They don't even bother to train the new employees. One barber
asked me if i would like to have a 'pung'. I gave the same puzzled look
that you have on your face now. It was then that i realised, he was
referring to a funk!! Panchayath kitta aala maratthuku adila 'crop'
pannindu irunthavan ellam city salon la velai pannina ipdi than aagum!!!
En pozhappa sirippaa aakarthe, ivaa pozhappaa pochu!!!
Cha.. madras la ma%@u pudunga kuda theriyadha aatkal nareya irukanga!!!
Ithellam enga poi mudiya pogartho.. Luckily for me, i am leaving for the US
next month and so wont have to worry about bad barbers.. atleast hope so..