The Primitive Barber

You always pay the penalty for your actions.

Let’s see how this applies to my story.

After my wife and I retired, we thought that we would put distance between living through the austere winters here in Canada and getting away to a warmer climate where the frequent and tiresome wearing of boots and putting on heavy coats and warm underwear would seem like an illusion. Our choice was to go to Goa where we were assured that we could spend four months of the winter in an utter state of Nirvana.

We chose to go to the River Sal Hotel in South Goa. This hotel was built on the banks of the River Sal and promised its occupants a taste of rural Goa and the tranquillity of locating a fair distance away from crowded, noisy and suffocating urban environment.  However, this came with a sometimes worrisome cost.  Amenities that one usually took for granted were not easily available.

For example, there were no taxis available unless one hoofed it for a considerable distance in search of one. There was only one doctor a couple of miles away from the hotel who took his afternoon siestas far too seriously thanks to his diet of rice and fish curry which acted like a sedative because of the sudden leap in his glucose levels. And finally, one had to take a bus to the nearest town ‘solna’(a registered name...not made up!) if one needed a haircut.

After two months of growing hair, on my head, on my ears and out of my nose, that made my head look like a prehistoric animal, my wife gladly accompanied me to Asolna because she had observed on one of our bus trips to Maargao, a big enough sign inviting customers to try their hair dressers.  It took us a little less than an hour to get to our destination but then we had all the time in the world.  When we approached the hair dresser she was petrified when I told her that I had come for a haircut.

‘We do not cut men’s hair here, she confessed more like a protest’.

‘If my boss heard that I cut a man’s hair, I would be out of a job’, she

put in apologetically.

‘I can cut your wife’s hair, but you will have to go to the market up the

road where you will find hairdressers that cut men’s hair,’ she added.

I hoofed it down the road feeling like a rejected leper, and soon noticed that there were no hair-dressing saloons in sight.  I walked up to a vendor who was in the process of rudely chopping off the head of a chicken for one of his customers. After he had expeditiously used a sharp knife to make the lethal cut, he shoved the dying chicken under a rusty kerosene drum while the poor bird fought for its life. Both the vendor and the customer were expressionless as though they were feeling its pain. When the dying sounds stopped and there was no visible movement coming from the drum he then held the limp creature and proceeded to pluck the feathers with much enthusiasm.  When the chicken was totally undressed, he placed the rupees that he earned in a little box under his seat.

‘Is there a hair dresser here somewhere?’ I interrupted. ‘Hair dresser?  What is hair dresser?’ he murmured.

He probably thought that it was some kind of special breed of chicken.

A passerby intervened. ‘Aareh!’ Hair dresser is barber!’ he clarified.

‘Yes, under tree up there,’ he pointed with delight.

I cautiously walked up to a young man admiring himself in a pocket size mirror.

He was obviously pleased with what he saw with his frequent smiles at the mirror.

‘You barber?!’ I enquired.

‘Yes, best barber in town,’ came the cheeky answer.

‘How much do you charge for a haircut?’ I encouraged.

‘You not from Asolna  no?’ was more of a statement than a question.

‘No,’ was my honest answer.

‘Then we charge sixty rupees,’ he declared with a knowing grin.

I was aware that his charge was inflated by at least a hundred percent but I agreed, and so he borrowed a chair from a vendor close by for me to sit on.  He put a soiled cloth around my neck and was soon on his way chopping my hair with the scissor music that only barbers can make while working.  I had no idea what he was doing because there was no mirror for me to watch him go through the process.  I was conscious of the fact, however, that almost everything in Goa had to be done on misplaced trust.  Finally, he let me have the pocket size mirror and I was impressed by the haircut. There was still some hair left to cover my scull and that to me was a bonus.

I had also taken a bottle of hair dye with me to massage my vanity so I asked the barber whether he knew how to dye my hair. He felt very hurt (an act that is frequent among Goans who will profess to their competence in whatever skill you might mention)) at the very thought that I would think that he did not know how to do something as elementary as applying dye on anybody’s hair. Rather than ask him another question and escalate the situation, I handed over the dye to him.  In a short time there were half a dozen individuals looking at the box containing the dye as though it had descended from another planet.  After much discussion among the group, the barber got to work. The dye was applied very sparingly and I later discovered that much of the dye was being conserved for somebody else who was unknown to me.  Why shouldn’t the barber be corrupt?

Everybody else was!!

As always, I had to wait for the dye to take. After half an hour, I asked the barber whether he would wash out the dye.

‘Wash out the dye?’ he repeated as though I had asked him to swim across the

River Sal.

‘No water here.  Put on hat.  Go home and wash!’ declared the barber as

though it was the only solution to my dilemma.

He must have thought that I was mentally challenged when I broke down in laughter and almost fell off the chair. I am sure that he said something rude about my behaviour to his friends but I was too hysterical to ask him for a translation.

I made my way to the hair dresser where my wife was having a haircut and after much persuasion, her hair dresser allowed us a pail of water to wash out my hair with strict orders that she take me to the far end of the garden and away from the public eye.

Both my wife and I were hysterical with laughter.  We wasted no time getting back to our hotel where we could wash out the dye and shampoo my hair.

On closer examination I was not surprised that I needed another dye job, thanks to the austerity of the barber.

I needed another dye job.

ONLY IN GOA!!!!

(Story drawn from ‘Homeward Bound’.... the autobiography of George Pereira