Of haircuts, vanity and philosophy

This post is a response to Orange's post. It set me wondering if our hairstyles can tell the story of our lives and how our barbers influence the stands and stances we take. So I shall set out to give you a brief history of my life in haircuts. Eventually I will address the burning question: is this is an vanity - or merely a form of self expression.

But first the story. (Kinda like they say on NPR - "but first the news")

I grew up in what we broadly referred to as the "upper middle class" - i.e. we had aspirations and pretensions of the upper classes and the means of the middle classes. (Which is not a bad thing - but thats another post). Add to that a catholic school education - where we were sent home if our shoes weren't reasonably polished every morning and the tie length wasn't just right. Now, now! That is not vanity - its called being "well groomed" (the term always reminded me of horses!). Similarly, our hair had to be combed properly and not be long "like the hippies" and being bald had various unhappy social consequences.

As a child, I went for my haircuts when Baba decided the time was right. I was taken to a reasonable - not the under-the-tree-shade barbers - hair salon where I was given a "sensible haircut". My hair was combed to the side neatly - with a left parting - and a clean trim at the back. My barber was always confounded by a hump of hair on top of my head which refused to be tamed (and to this day stands up in reverence to who knows what!!). And till I turned 18 and left home for the wilderness beyond - this continued. Without fail, no questions asked. Excepting for one time when I was 14 and had to go through the ordeal of going bald in order to respect my Grand-ma's desire for my sacred thread ceremony (which for the record, I wore for only two weeks afterwards). At school - I promptly earned the name of "taklu" - and the name persisted and many of my friends continued to call me that till I left school.

Then I left home and went away to college. The critical years of chaos, and confusion. So I decided to change my hairstyle and experimented with my parting. First came the middle parting - which made me look like a Bengali scholar from the middle ages - ugh!!! To add to my miseries my Mom thought I looked quite like Mithun C. That did it!!! So I tried the parting on the right side. And that annoyed my parents --- :)) So I stuck to it. My statement was made - I had come to myself. Can't help laughing at myself, all these years later.

Then I got a job and went to work for an engineering firm - back in the city - with the added joys of a salary. I started getting haircuts for Rs. 300 (which was a LOT in those days - I understand India is very different now). Oh how I enjoyed the looks of utter horror on my aunts' faces when I casually told them about my extravagant haircuts!! I had arrived :))

And then life changed. I started looking beyond familiar shores. Decided to go to graduate school - moved to a town in Western NY, and in the middle of the chaos of moving to a new country, the tensions of coming out to myself, and the pressures of my MS research - I don't even remember taking haircuts. I guess my hair just went into shock and stopped growing.

I moved within a year to Seattle - where my heart lies to this day and where I think I finally played out each card in my hand and having done so, came to myself. But in getting there, I was protesting against the world - wondering where I fit in, if at all. The politics of the era did not help, and further pushed me to the edges. I became an activist, protested and marched against a zillion things, turned vegetarian for a year - and did a variety of crazy things.

Six years - I had a bunch of different hairstyles. It started with questioning the need for grooming at all - once and for all, I am not a horse. Then I questioned the need for a sensible haircut - I tried to define what a "sensible haircut" was - and realized the word "sensible" was rather whimsical itself. The only property that any two things that were both "sensible" shared was that they were either boring or simply un-noteworthy. So I decided to stop being sensible - after all, I was finally finding myself - intellectually alive, emotionally vibrant and politically active. I had no patience for "sensibility." But at the same time - I had no time for such frivolous things as "tending to my hair" - or paying a big corporation for a hair cut. (Corporations, after all are evil!). So I stopped combing my hair, started going to a locally owned hair salon on the Ave., and cut my hair short - very very short. I looked like an egg with black fungus on it - and enjoyed this rather ugly look. Everybody - including my friends - grimaced at me. My parents decided that I had finally gone to the dogs (a far cry from the well groomed son they imagined I was), and even my advisor started wondering at the complete lack of vanity (which may I remark, is actually an exaggerated form of vanity!).

And it was at this cozy hair salon in Seattle that I had my first significant barber Ryan. He was not the annoying kinds - the kinds you felt obliged to make conversation with, instead he knew what was on your mind and very gently if tangentially comforted you, assured you, let you know that all is fine with the world. And every time you looked down - he made you hold your chin up, look up at the mirror and smile at your own goofy reflection.

Ryan told me of his girlfriend, his family, of his trips to the Burning Man festival and through each session I followed the gentle ups and downs in his life as he unsuspectingly offered himself up. He encouraged my ridiculous haircut to start with. (Kind of humored it) but as time passed he slowly mellowed me down by his acceptance of my ridiculous stylistic suggestions (lets go even shorter!!), and without me noticing, gently used his scissors and razors to snip away and round my hard edges. Strangely enough, after every haircut - I felt a bit happier and a bit more sensible.

When I left Seattle, I was sad to say goodbye to Ryan. After all he had been my friend, philosopher and guide in time when I was grappling with many different things. Almost five years hence, to this day, I wear my hair reasonably short, have done away with partings all together, and I still don't comb my hair - but yet manage to look sensible. This morning as I ran into church - as usual late for choir practice - I was quite amused to find my minister sporting a new short hair cut, that made her look ten years younger. She motioned to me and whispered "I asked them to give me an Alan" :))

So what part of this is vanity? The desire to be well groomed? The desire to share with those who are willing to hear (people like Ryan) about internal conflicts. Is the desire to express oneself vanity? If that is so, then isn't being sensible just as vain - in fact its worse in its obnoxious holier-than-thou pretensions.

Now where was I??