Back in the good old bad old days of travel in India, when a Cafe Latte was not to be had anywhere in India, when trains ran as much as 17 hours late and when chai still came in clay cups and when the only commercials you saw on television (if you saw a television) were for tea, soap and shampoo, there was a dearth of hairdressing options for women.
Back in those days you were lucky if you saw a hair salon on the telly, there were none in the actual real life I was living back then. Travel in India used to be a guaranteed bad hair season, god knows I have taken my mop through every nuance of the Bad Hair Day in my travels.
I tried barbers, the first guy spent half an hour playing with my hair, lifting it like liquid silk and running it through his fingers until his eyes glazed over. Others turned out to be sleezy no talent walla.
Once I ended up in Johnny’s Salon in Kathmandu and was halfway through one of the most memorable bad haircuts of my life (I had optimistically asked for a ‘shag’ cut) when I realised that the salon was actually operating as a front for a brothel. In desperation I bought a pair of thinning scissors and packed them in my bag. I even used them once or twice. They were eventually confiscated by a real hair dresser I happened to meet in Manali one year. Eventually I just gave up and let the stuff grow and used bits of wire or string or even rubber bands to hold my hair out of my eyes so I could at least see where I was going and managed somehow until I made it to Bangkok where hairdressers are a baht a dozen.
As for colour, well we had Mehendi or Henna. Red or Black.
I had faith that the scene would improve. India is a hair obsessed nation, I told myself, God knows they have spas and beauty salons that are world class, maybe they were hiding their hair stylists in places I hadn’t thought to look. But in those days the most popular hair style for women was thick black and glossy with a centre parting, and so I waited as the years rolled over.
When Sonia Gandhi’s party came into power and Mr Singh set about ‘liberating’ the economy and inviting foreign investment into the country, a beautiful by product of the new wealth creation was that magazines like Vogue and Harpers and Cleo began to blaze the trail for change in the life of the modern woman. I began to read about hair stylists in far-off Mumbai, and I knew my day would soon arrive.
You may have read about my first test drive of a hairstylist in my neighborhood. He did the job, and an adequate job it was but his attitude was straight out of the seventies when some stylists achieved celebrity status by riding high on their scissors.
He sniffed almost disapprovingly when I answered his question about the length of time between touch ups, as if I was deliberately growing a skunk line down my middle parting. He obviously preferred to work with young spunky chicks who needed his approval more than I did.
Moving right along, the next time I had a bad hair day I tried another salon. Immediately on entering I felt welcomed, the girls at the desk gave me a price for a standard wash and blow wave, suggested a hair spa when I showed them how dry my hair was and showed me straight to a seat. Very professional and friendly. Then a young man called Bhandan walked into my life and I knew my bad hair days were gone forever! A hair spa and a blow wave later, my feedback sought and given gladly I waltzed out of the salon with the certain knowledge that my Bad Hair Days in India were over for good.
Its such a relief when you find a hairdresser who you trust to make you look fabulous and an added bonus when the salon he worked at is professional to the core.
Lakme Studio M Block Market GKII New Delhi