My Haircut

Last week I had the worst haircut ever. Or rather the second worst haircut. The first one was by my friend Daks who had smoked so much pot that he forgot whether he was shearing a sheep or cutting his dear friend's locks. I wanted to wear a t-shirt that said, "I HATE MY HAIR DRESSER". And my friend was (and still is) Gay. How could he have given me a haircut like that? I have asked myself numerous times. The cut was so bad that I would have been thrown pennies at had one more strand of hair been removed. Patches of short hair liberally covered under uneven curls. Right side wiped clean and left part trimmed. I looked like this goth girl who resembled a cat and sat in Comparative Literature classes.

So Hair Cuttery in Dupont Circle in Washington DC is the culprit's den. I should have known better than to walk into a highly unimaginatively named place: Hair Cuttery. It's second only to walking into a place with a french name in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Imagine a place called "Le Heir Clippery" or whatever it is called in French, located on State St in Chatts.

A $20 steep shampoo and cut. I was transported back to Lahore where I once had my "tind" done when I was a boy of merely 10. Nayi's ustraa went all over town on my little head. And the way water slipped on my pretty tind. And the mandatory knocks on the skull. And the shouts: Oye Tind. Oye Tarkone. Oye Ganje!

Yes, it all returned as the cut progressed. At the total mercy of electric-ustra-wielding elderly woman named Mercedes, I sat like Abraham's son waiting to be slaughtered. She was not as slick as her name suggested but she did destroy the environment that she came into contact with. Oye, I am not THAT stupid that I would give her real name away and then have you all deny business to some poor immigrant woman who just happens to be in the wrong profession. In fact, I suggest real full bloodied Americans should go and have a haircut by her, and then experience being at the recieving end of tyranny. But Lord O Lord, why me? What have Punjabis done to Nicaragua that I had to suffer the revenge? I mean, if she was Bengladeshi I would understand.

I texted all over the globe with my Cingular phone, announcing from Cape to Cairo, from London to Luanda, from New York to bloody Nagasaki, that my hair were never gonna be the same again. Some of you told me that I should sit tight as it all grows back pretty quickly. You were right. But the humiliation of walking around Dupont Circle like that..........