The Return of the Haircut

Last week I went for a haircut. Pause for a moment. Internalise the import of those words: I ‘went’ for a haircut.

I am not vain about my hair. Nature has given me no cause to be. Apart from a couple of attempts to perm it and to give it a dashing streak of burgundy, my hair and I’ve been leading generally disparate lives.

Yes, there has been the odd social occasion when the hair has not risen to meet the challenge of my inner sophisticate. But I’ve learnt to put that aside, as has my hair. Put me aside, that is. And go about its wilful way, usually looking as if it has just seen (a) a cockroach, (b) a ghost, and (c) my boss in the days when I had one.

Some ten years ago, I did try to assert myself. By shaving all my hair off – there, that’ll learn it, being the message. Also to assuage a recurring nightmare that all my hair would fall out one day. That’s me: if I’m scared of something, I’ll go all out to make it happen.

The bald idyll ended abruptly when the very Malayali security person at IGI airport security asked me even as she whisked her wand over my visibly ponderous breasts, ‘Are you a man or a woman?’ I lifted said mammaries in reply and quirked an eyebrow at her. The incident stayed with me for a long time.

Menopause – or was it HRT? – brought with it unexpected blessings in the form of enhanced hair growth. Yes, on the upper lip as well, but also on the head. The husband provided a stylistic tip here by going ‘no poo’. No, that’s not what it sounds like. He merely banished shampoo from our lives.

Suddenly, my hair was in flourish mode. I loved it, except that now, we were living in a country where fancies like hair styling cost close to a hundred quid. Each time. So I stayed with the husband’s monthly efforts and began to forget to look into the mirror.

I thought I’d hit the jackpot when I discovered an Iraqi hairdresser in Swansea who charged a flat ten quid for any kind of cut, but did not run to any fancier stuff. Which was fine by me.

What was not as fine was the man’s constant replay of his two ex-wives. It was only when the brushing off of stray hair began taking longer than the haircut itself that I twigged on. In my defence I’ll say that women of my age and silhouette tend to get invisibilised (and, yes, that’s a word) in terms of male attention. Passes become something that Ranbir Kapoor makes at me at 3 am.

To return to Covid times, my last haircut was on 21 December 2019. The hair had used the op to blossom. There, that’ll learn you, it seemed to be telling me. And there was no recourse available.

In April, desperation met hysteria. And I begged the husband for help. The problem was that a month later, I was asked to return the favour. Unlike me and mine, the husband and his hair have been on a lifelong honeymoon. I was petrified to be asked to play gooseberry. The only option was to stall. So I stalled.

I was lucky. I had to stall only for a month or so. Like, I said, last week, I – make that we – went for a haircut.