Evolution of Haricutting

From Kamruddin nayi (barber) @ Jhansi , Uttar Pradesh India to Aveda Hair Cutting Institute Minneapolis , Minnesota , USA ..its been quite a journey ....coming to think of it all the barbers and the barbarians :-) {female barbers } i went to signify a lot of important phases in my life ....

From our very loving , homely local kamruddin nayi ..who gave me and my sister exact same hair cut as he would give to any of the guys in our locality to Ghadse Aunty and Jumrani which were our first attempts at getting stylised ..though we would always lack the motivation and the urge to ask them to make it actually stylised ....that were our first attempts to look city like while sticking to what we were ..Gaonwale stuck in middle of nowhere in a town called Jhansi ...


Then came hyderabad ..where ppl charged so exhorbitantly and did no better than my small modest town Jhansi ...and then came the realisation that everything from now onwards would be charged ..even if the hairdresser was making a chit chat with you ..that was added to your bills ..nthin came free from now on ..and no one was actually meaning it when they were asking you how you were ...but still we are Indians and although we dnt mean to do it ..we are always genuinely interested in others affairs ..and so I will not call all of it a fake ..

Then came Rourkela..back to being in town ...Going to beauty parlours with friends where each was trying to look better than the other ...it was great fun ...once me and Aritra got the exact same haircut ..got quite a laugh for that in our daily mess chit chat ...!!! ..At that point it was all about friends and not about the beauty parlour ladies ...

And Now coming back to the land of Uncle sam ...attempts at trying to be American ...the first time around that I went for an haircut ..I was plain tense though it was just a haircut ..no thats not it ..it was haircut in a different country all together ....Used to the Indian way of haircut I nicely took a hairbath and went out into the chilling cold...5 mins down the line I felt my hair getting heavy and to my utter dismay my hair had all been coated with layers of ice..the water in my hair had frozen..!!!! It was only later that I realised that they give you a shampoo when you get there ..you dnt have to do that ...Nyways I made it there and then came the need to make the all american small talk ..ask any Indian to do that ..we cannot .....all the people around me where discussing everything with these hairdressers ..how on earth do you do that ..eveything done ..haircut over ..I forgot to tip ..!!! Big Blunder ..nobody does that ...

Ya but then its been a year now and this time around I just new exactly the right things to do and say ..not very well though ..still I can give a pat on my back and say ..I say Good Job buddy ..!!!

God knows which other hairdresses life will take me too..!!!

Fall 2008

Its been a year since I came to the US now .... feels longer than a year though ..so much has changed , I have seen so much and learnt so much in this one year .

Its fall again , the wonderful green all around , the river blowing from the missisipi river ..i remember writing about it all around the same time last year and feel the same kind of serene feeling I felt when I saw it the first time . Nothing stands before the beautiful missisipi river and the green carpets all around in bringing serenity and desire to do better to ones life.

I saw a movie today called aap ka aasman , a art movie ...it is the story of a mentally challenged child and his parents who are in great despair bcoz of their child . They discover a brain booster medicine which changes their child into a mathematical genius but at the same time makes him emotionally zero . He takes to drugs , starts hating his parent and ultimately assaults both of them . They then discover the antidote and bring him back to being a mentally challenged kid . They then encourage him to paint , since he seems to like that and eventually get him to present in a art exhibition ...

Gave a very important message to me ..sometimes we forget to appreciate what we have ..hoping it was something else ..but when it does become something else we realise thats not what we wanted ..

Another thing that I heard recently was a speech by Steve Jobs ..he mentioned that always remember that death is great leveller ..if you were to die today ..what would you have done ...
life is too short ..try living it and not watching it pass by ...