A Little Off the Top

Getting your hair cut by someone who does not speak your same language can be nerve-wracking. That is why it is best to bring pictures.

That is how I found myself in a Tirur barbershop: a small, plastic-covered photo album in my lap, pointing to a picture taken last Christmas at Jenna’s mother’s house. I am surrounded by Jenna and her family—her sister Priya, her cousins Mark and Kathleen, her Auntie Lisa and Uncle Mike. In the photo, I have short hair, close-cropped along the sides with a pointy inch-long tuft rising from the top.

I point at my hair in the photo. “Like this. Short,” I say, looking imploringly at the barber. He looks from the photo to my head. Back to the photo. Back to the head. He squints. Pulls at my long hair. Molds it like clay as he looks back yet another time at the photo—like an artist judging a subject before he begins his work.

He nods an affirmative and gets out the shearers.

For the past decade or so of my life, I have said the same thing in every barbershop or hair salon I have happened to walk into: “About an inch off the top. Number two on the sides. Keep the fade.” Regardless of the cutters credentials, they have understood and made quick work of my hair.

No such simple procedure is enacted in Tirur. The barber is a genial man in his mid-fifties. He wears a stained white button-up shirt and a loose dhoti (or ankle-length loincloth), which is the style of many working-class men in Kerala. He hobbles around his small shop painfully on legs that appear crippled from some problem at birth—his hips are splayed out at an odd angle, his knees bent inwards towards each other. He must balance himself on the inner edges of his feet.

He kicks the chair I am sitting in unceremoniously and gets it to drop a few inches so he can get a better view of the top of my head. He roughly directs my head towards the angles it needs to go in order to begin shaving and pruning.

Two men—the type who strike me as regulars to this barbershop—come in off the street and sit in plastic chairs behind me. They talk to the barber animatedly, sometimes chuckling and pointing at my head. I surmise they are not here for their haircuts; they are here to watch me get mine.

With his shearers, the barber shaves it a little shorter than I would have preferred. But I cannot protest. I already feel a nice breeze fanning the back of my head. He starts in dexterously with the scissors and snips away the longer stands at the crown of my head. He cuts away the bangs with a clickety-clacking flourish. Then, he takes an old-fashioned long razor and shaves off my sideburns and cleans up the edges around the hairline. The razor makes a satisfyingly rough sound against my skin.

After it is all done—like barbers the world over—he slaps some ointment on the back of my neck and stands back with his hands upon his hips, his jaw thrust forward proudly. He gives the thumbs-up sign. I give it to him back.

I get out some rupees and he looks at them and then back at me. “Change?” he says (every business owner in Tirur knows that word).

I tell him to wait a moment and, leaving my photo album as collateral, run over to a market across the street. I buy some vegetables and a loaf of bread and come back to the barber with some smaller bills.

When I return, the barber is now alone, sitting in the chair I had just occupied, flipping through my photo album. He sees me enter and smiles, pointing at the album. He flips back the first page, obviously intending for me to fill him in on who all these people are.

The first picture is of Jenna and I two summers ago. He points to Jenna. “Wife,” I say. He repeats with a broad smile: “Wife.”

He quickly goes through a series of Jenna’s family. I say, “Wife’s sisters.” He repeats: “Sisters.”

“Wife’s mother.”

“Mother.”

“Cousins,” I say. “Cousin,” he repeats, still smiling.

He gets to pictures of my family. I point out my mother and father, my grandparents, my uncles and aunts, my cousins, my friends and old roommates. Each time, the barber patiently and proudly repeats the words: “Father…Mother…Grandfather…Grandmother…Uncle.”

When he has flipped through the entire album, he takes my payment and offers his hand. I shake it, in a silent reassurance that I will be back when my hair once again needs a little off the top.