Such was the pull of Basavangudi’s literary aura that a barber shop came up with the concept of haircuts styled after writers. The owner of New Modern Bombay Men’s Parlour, V. Harish, a school dropout himself, was proud about the Kannada writers who had won the Jnanpith Award. He collected their books, displayed them on the counter in front of a wall-wide mirror, and put their framed photographs on the wall. Then he devised specially styled haircuts—a ‘mushroom cut’ that made the hair stand up like a tuft on the skull, exactly like Kuvempu’s. He followed this up with the Shivarama Karanth
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