These are the first few lines of an Odia duet I heard at a Barber's Haircut Saloon.
Boy - TO SEXY SEXY ANTA DEKHI
MO DIL FIDA HELA.
(Looking at your sexy waistline,
My heart is fine).
Girl - TO STRONG STRONG BODY DEKHI MO NAZAR LAKHI GALA.
(Looking at your strong body,
My eyes were fixated steady)
Calculate how many English, Hindi and Odia words are there in this so called Odia song loaded with tons of vulgarity. It is high time the legendary Odia singers Akshay Mohanty, Chitta Jena, Prafulla Kar et all take rebirth to save Odia music from adulteration, annihilation, cataclysmic alteration and its eventual extinction. I requested the guy giving me haircut and shave to save me from any further torment by switching from this "Sexy Sexy" song to something less sensuous and more listenable. He dismissed me - "AGYAN AJI KALI SABU EIYA KU SUNUCHANTI (Sir, these days all folks listen to this). He made his point.
This trip enabled me to play Holi in India after a hiatus of more than quarter of century. However it was a subdued Holi for me as I am not a very colorful person as I use color very frugally and hate to take long showers. Holi came and went, leaving its mark. Yet I can proudly boast that this year will be the year of my unique experience of celebrating Holi festival in India.
Now it was my turn to experience another thing unique to India - getting a haircut in a saloon. Saloons here are not the just the spots for hair cut and shaving, it is a place of rendezvous, a watering hole, social gathering by itself. Before leaving for India my wife told me to have a haircut and dye my irreversible whitening of hair. But I procrastinated - "Why spend $20 for a haircut in USA when I can cut my hair and dye it in India for less than $3, tips included. It will save you some time. (My wife dyes my hair and does a great job at it)." I thought she would be pleased but she responded - "When you ever listen to me !" It was her nonchalant response to someone who had been religiously listening to her all these years. Nevertheless I didn't want to miss the experience of having my hair cut and dyed at the local saloon in our locality.
We NRIs (Non Resident Indians) are world champion hypocrites who give bombastic speeches about the low cost manual labor in India. But when time comes, we take the guilty pleasure of taking full advantage of the low cost, grabbing it at the very first opportunity. It was my turn to do so today by visiting a Saloon, as a Barber's shop is called in local lingo located barely a mile from our house.
This Barber shop aka Saloon was clean. Over the years it has improvised a lot - from a wooden Kiosk with fluttering electricity to a concrete room with a wall mounted AC unit blowing cool air being its latest addition. But I hardly noticed any changes in the profile of the folks gathered inside. After entering the Saloon I noticed a few guys, thinking they were ahead of me in line. So when the hair dresser signaled me to occupy a chair, it surprised me, putting me in a spot. Sensing my hesitancy he insisted - "SAARE, BASANTU (Sir, please take your seat).
Soon I realized the reason of me being pulled ahead of the rest. Those guys ahead of me were not customers, but free roamers and freeloaders needlessly hanging around. The reluctant hair dresser is no fan of these guys whom he refers as BALUNGAs (worthless weeds) and wanted to avoid any PUNGA (not to mess around) with these local brats. He tolerated the unavoidable nuisance as an occupational hazard in his profession which he has to tolerate. This he had confided to me earlier.
One of them was combing his hair backwards standing in front of the big mirror from time immemorial, whistling from the top his snorted piggy lips. He then took a break, wiped residual hairs off the comb, checked it again by turning it over. Not satisfied, placing it close to his mouth, he tried to vacuum it off by blowing hair through his pouting lips.
He resumed his combing operation, ploughing his hair backwards, uttering in Odia - KIRE KUNA (a common Odia nick name) TA SHAALI BAHAGHARA RU PHERILA (Did Kuna return from marriage of his sister-in-law) ? The guy reading a local newspaper got up, walked to the front door to spit out his betel stained saliva and replied - "NA MA. SE E JAYE MEESSI KALLA KARINI". (He has not given me a miss call - a call on the cell phone destined to be missed but expected to be returned at the earliest). The tete-a-tete continued as the barber focused on giving me a clean shave, used his blade in surgical precision reaching out to all the nooks and corners of my face which I can rarely reach. He continued weeding out the unwanted hairs off my face, gave me a nice massage, soothing my jaded nerves. I thanked him for giving me a clean slate.
Adding my tip to the final payment it cost me little more than couple of dollars. It can't get any cheaper than that. Can't complain, when I had a close shave for a tiny amount, as close and low it can get.
Barbers, Plumbers, Electricians, Mechanics et all thrive well in Bhubaneswar, making decent amount of money. There is always demand for them due to the city's explosive population growth. The dignity of labor hasn't quite matched up to their earnings in a feudal society of BABU and SAARE where manual labor is often frowned upon. But due to an upward demand curve and mobility, the dignity of labor is bound to grow as years progress. More later...
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