Hair-raising, literally!

I had all the temerity of walking into a lion’s den. I poked my head in, I sniffed, I blinked. Half a dozen heads turned and a dozen eyes stared at me. I almost retreated but I willed myself to step in.

A heavily mascara-ed pair of eyes questioned me from behind the desk.

“Mau gunting – rambut,” my stammer is quite pronounced when I speak Indonesian.

“Oh, cut hair,” she asked me back, her heavy accent making it almost unintelligible.

My first hurdle over, I heaved a sigh of relief. The relief was short lived because she passed me a card and asked me to choose my hairdresser.

“Expert – Rp 200000 designer – Rp 150000, professional – Rp 100000, specialist – Rp 80000.”

In the inexplicable hierarchy of hairdressers, a specialist has the lowest rung? I couldn’t make sense of that. Or maybe their English was flawed. I made a rough calculation to our user-friendly rupees. 100000 rupiah would convert to 500 rupees. I squinted. I coaxed my gray cells to make a decision. Was my hair really worth paying so much? Reading impatience through her mascara, I hastily opted for professional.

The one thing I like about Indonesian salons is that men with magic in their hands wash your hair. There is a never-before-sensed bliss in that fifteen minutes of trickling warm water and soft lather and patiently massaging fingers. I fought an impulse to drift away to a rose-bed of dreams.

Soon enough, I was transported back to reality. My destiny was waiting for me in purple-highlighted hair (!!), a pony tail, and a menacing-looking tool belt. My destiny smiled. I resigned to it.

“Layer,” I muttered. I meant that I wanted my hair cut in a layered style. He apparently understood me. He started it with a smile. They all start with smiles, but the smile would disappear soon, I clairvoyantly mused.

Let me briefly interrupt a sapless guy’s story of misfortune to enlighten my readers that my hair is resistant to anything done to it – shampooing, conditioning, combing, tying, cutting – the list goes on. It revolts and fights back. I know it, the hair stylists don’t; hence my reluctance at approaching one. They all start in earnest, tut-tut about it midway through, and start their silent curses at about three-quarters of the way. I sit through it like my hair doesn’t belong to me. Then I pay and slink back to my home.

My purple man was no different. He said something which sounded very much like swear words. His co-stylist who was hobnobbing with his petite, straight-haired client, laughed. I stared at the mirror with a stone face.

The blow dry was taking an even longer time. He tried the long metal brush and then the short round brush. He fiddled around with the hair dryer. He was trying to coax each of my hair to its assigned position. I just wanted to run out. Finally, he stood back. He was visibly tired. I said thank you.

I paid. I beat a hasty retreat. I couldn’t read the expression behind that heavy mascara. Or maybe I didn’t want to read it.

I reached home. “Ha ha, amma, you look so funny,” my little one chirped.

“What is so funny about it?” I defended my hair.

“You look like Fluffy,” she said.

“Who is Fluffy?” I asked. I had forgotten.

She rushed to her room and brought out her pink and yellow, very curly, very frizzy, extremely unkempt looking poodle soft toy.

“Ha ha, see.”

“Woof woof,” I intoned.