Sunday, January 24, 2010

Barber shop wisdom

There is a shloka in the Valmiki Ramayana, in which it is said: Dasharatha’s hairs were turning grey in the side of his temples. The grey hairs near the sides leant into his ears and whispered, ‘you are getting old, crown Rama as the King and retire to the forest for your vanaprasthashrama’, whereafter Dasharatha decided to anoint Rama.

I was realising something when I was getting my hairs cut this evening. As kids, we were afraid of getting our hairs cut. We feared the barbers scissors. Our fathers stood nearby, cajoling and encouraging us, and saying that it will be over soon. The large cloth wrapped around our puny shoulders, were showered with cut hair, black and healthy and straight. To me it used to happen at Saibanna’s Modern saloon at Wadi.

Time passed. It was Gulbarga, then Moovattupuzha and Coimbatore and Calcutta. The hairs were getting snipped regularly at monthly intervals and fell on the shroud. The hairs were sparser and there were a few that were grey. But they were few.

On to Delhi. Fast forward a few decades. The hairs were falling down as before but the ratio of grey to black was increasing. Today there was a lot of grey. More grey than black and they were not as straight and stiff as before. Lots of grey hair. We are growing older. As we plod through life, a visit to the barber’s shop tells us more about passing time than anything else does. The black hair days can never come back. Time passes. We pass away. It is time for our kids to take over the world.