Hair cut dilemma

I am proud to proclaim my newly conceived theory- “Beware, beauticians hate curly hair, they will chop it all off”.

Let me elaborate:

My new job requires me to look my very best. I need to look mature, posh, sophisticated and well dressed when in reality I’m a complete nutcrack, wacky and crazy. Anyway, I can manage to fake maturity. But to look posh and sophisticated is a tad difficult when you have frizzy, restless hair. My hair hardly stays quiet and even after combing and brushing my unruly locks; it gets back to being crazy.

You now might throw me the idea of permanently straightening my hair. The idea is active on my cards but I keep pushing it aside only because it is a wallet rip-off activity. Hair bonding is like threading your eyebrows. Once you start, you cannot afford to stop. The same goes for the hair. Just as much as you cannot walk around with eyebrows growing like jungle grass, neither can you imagine strutting around with a head looking like a used mop.

So taking all these reasons into consideration, I decided to go in for a haircut. Now if you take my case and put in a haircut, it’s a scary proposition. Neither do I have thick locks to chop off nor do I have choices of hairstyles to go for. A fringe is out of the question, thanks to my forehead. Am I complaining? Not really. I’m quite proud of it all. But still, I want to look different.

So here I am in a beauty parlor in Mumbai. You wont believe me, but its Karishma Kapoor sitting across me getting her nails and hair done. Ok, maybe it’s a little hard to recognize her sans makeup, but I’m so sure its her. I try hard not to stare, so I throw casual ‘long’ stares. Yup, it’s her all right. But what is she doing here in a normal middle class parlor?? Who cares, I just saw Karishma Kapoor!!! Tra la la la…!!

Sorry for that small diversion. Back to my hair. Where was I? Ahh yes. So here I am, waiting for my turn. The lady who would eventually make me or break me, enter. I carefully explain, in English, that I wanted a different look but I wanted my hair length maintained. She replies back in Hindi. Uh oh…trouble!! Language barrier can create problems and I knew I was doomed. Nevertheless, I repeated my request (in English!!) and she confirmed saying she’d do what I wanted.

With a small prayer under my breath, she began. She showed me the length of how much she’d cut and I gave the green signal. Snip snip snip went the scissors. My curls and I bid adieu to each other. I had to remove my glasses for obvious reasons. As such, I could not observe the proceedings. I waited, with abated breath, trying to make something out of the blurred vision of my hair in the mirror in front of me. Snip snip it went. Soon it was the blowdryer unfrizzying out my locks. I love getting my hair blowdried. It keeps my hair looking neat. The lady put her finishing touches to my last strand of hair. I quickly grab my glasses and put it on with all anticipation and eagerness. I look at the mirror and “AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHH…”

The scissor-wielding lady chopped most of my hair and left just one strand of hair the length it was in the beginning. All in the name of a ‘Step Cut’ and wanting to satisfy the customer’s wants. Now my hair hardly stays put. I can’t tie a ponytail due to the simple fact that there is not much hair for a ponytail, neither can I leave it ‘down’ because there is nothing to let down and if I do, it resembles Einstein’s rocking hair-do.

There go my attempts at looking posh and sophisticated. With how I look now, I doubt getting married soon. My next step might be to get a complete makeover. Gulp…another risky mind numbing proposition!!

The Ladies Coupe

A mountain trek, an afternoon on a scintillating Seychelles beach, a lazy boat ride down Kerala’s backwaters, a mind exhilarating bungee jump- these are different experiences one need to live out, at least once in their years on earth. I too agree. I mean, one day I would love to muster all my courage and go bungee jumping. But the one thing a person definitely needs to go through is to travel by the ladies compartment in the Mumbai train.

The word ‘lady’ conjures up different adjectives like gentle, beautiful, tender, honest, kind and the list can go on. Unfortunately such adjectives are flung out of the window when you encounter with the Mumbai train ladies. They are hooligans, cut throat competitors for a train seat, highly fluent in Marathi insults and its other regional dialects, and (unfortunately for people like me) blessed with amazonic strength.

The following points will help throw more light to what I’m trying to convey:

1. The Mumbai ladies’ coupe is the best place to lose weight. Forget about all those subscriptions to VLCC, Fitness One, or Talwalkers. Just step into the ultra modern ladies’ compartment and you get squashed to the figure 5 you have always dreamed of. All your flabs disappear as you try (!) to edge your way in. You achieve the firm arms by holding onto the compartment bars for dear life and your legs and feet, well, bad news- you might not find them in the stampede. Lucky if you do.
2. Are you running late in the morning and you need to get your shirt/kurta ironed AND you need to catch the train??? Not to worry. Don’t bother about the creased unironed clothes. Just run for the train and get into the specially reserved space for ladies. Within few minutes of pushing and mashing and compressing, you will emerge onto your destination platform, all neatly ironed out and perfect.
3. A pleasure note for all the lesbians out there- girls, its all boobs and butts here in the ladies coupe!!! My heartfelt condolences for the males as they do not, or rather, probably will not get to enjoy such an event.
4. If a lady does not get to jump out onto her desired station, the chances of her not letting the other commuters to get onto their stations are highly probable. She will most likely bless you with some marathi abuses, you would be so overwhelmed enough to miss your own station.
5. Mumbai is a huge city so you will have to keep yourself entertained. Many a lady can be seen equipped with headfones stuck in their ears. If you don’t own a portable radio or I-pod, not to worry. There are many shoulders to fall sleep on. A sure shot solution to your most wanted power naps.
6. The best way to get out of the train is to simply SCREAM! The way that these ladies shriek is almost akin to how the people screamed in the sinking Titanic (as per the movie).
7. A word of caution to people who are as blind as me- please wear your contact lenses. You never know when your spectacles will be pushed off your face. Don’t even imagine bending down to search for them. You are close to committing suicide in the midst of all those stomping feet and stilleto heels.

This is just a nutshell of what I have really gone through. Watch out for my up coming bestseller- ‘The Adventures of a Fraud Mallu in Mumbai’.

Blog update

I never realized I would have readers to my blog and needless to say, I am encouraged to write more. Well, it’s pretty obvious with the time gap that I was not able to blog, primarily due to many reasons, the main one being my training for my new job. As I type this down in my quarters in Mumbai, I can say that I am recovering from my brief stint in depression (the previous blogs are evidence to this fact!!). With all confidence, I can proudly proclaim that Wacko Crazy Bless is back with a bang…She’s still hurting all right, but the pain has died down and its only the scabs that she’s scratching at. My mom says that’s the sign of healing. You can’t really refute moms’ opinions! So here goes… a cornucopia of madness!