Cut, copy and some paste

Dated film magazines apart, unfettered narcissism is the one thing you are bound to get familiar with after spending time at a barber shop. The hour and a half that Nitish Rungta has spent facing a mirror in Wakil’s Beauty Salon hasn’t quite satisfied his vanity. The Kolkata-based 29-year-old businessman continues to gaze at his reflection. As if chasing an elusive perfection, his fingers pass through his recently gelled hair more than a dozen times. His bill finally arrives. He has been charged for a shampoo, a haircut, a shave, a manicure, pedicure and the threading of his eyebrows (a process through which he barely flinched). He is a regular here and, from the look of things, a generous tipper. Would he identify himself as ‘metrosexual’? Rungta simply says, “I think that term was relevant when people like me were an exception. I look around today and everyone is finding an excuse to look better. If metrosexuality is the new norm, singling us out is just unfair.”

Married for two years, Rungta believes that this investment in his appearance also blunts the obvious disparities that once existed in his relationship. “I used to notice how my wife would spend hours trying to look her attractive best for me. I wanted to repay that favour. So what if getting my blackheads removed is a little painful? Given the ordeals she endures, this is the least I can do.” Mohammad Nazir and Sama Ahmad, who work at Wakil’s, have heard Rungta’s theories of equality before. Having made a career of patient listening, the barber and the beautician are the keepers of many secrets that men share. Together they have 40 years of shared experience. From their vantage point, the swivelling hairdresser’s chair becomes a perfect lens through which one sees masculinities gently revolve.

Nazir was only 15 when he started training to become a barber in Patna 25 years ago. “Those were simpler days,” he reminisces. “I just needed to know how to give men a shave. There was only one principle when it came to haircutting — cut the hair short.” These days, complains Nazir, all men want long sideburns. “As far as their hair goes, they just use some gel to give themselves the look they want. Earlier, you needed craft to make someone look like Shah Rukh Khan. There’s none of that now.” Ahmad tries hard to stifle a laugh. For more than a decade she had mastered the art of giving men facials, but has now been forced to expand her repertoire. “Men want a hair spa today. They want their hair coloured. They want their arms waxed, their cheeks threaded. Everyone wants a manicure.”

According to Ahmad, the husband who comes into a salon with his wife on a weekend is no longer a disinterested spectator. Nazir, for his part, remains a touch disgruntled. “There are more men who walk through these doors, yes, but our art has certainly taken a beating.” A few blocks away, in the marginally posher unisex salon Mapui’s, a customer flips through a little folder containing pictures of leading Bollywood actors. Hairdresser Mohammad Afzar tries hard to explain to his lightly-balding client that he doesn’t have the required mane for Hrithik Roshan’s Bang Bang coiffure. In an effort to console, he says, “Let us find a style that’ll suit you and your personality the best.”

For Afzar, haircutting and styling is a family profession. But unlike his father, who was known for his emulation of several Amitabh Bachchan templates, Afzar has toiled hard to develop styles that cater to individual faces and preferences. There is, he says, an economic imperative that informs his customisations. “In today’s competitive and cutthroat world, people need to capitalise on their own identities to get ahead of one another. The way you style your hair tells a story about you, which proves important.” Sonam Phunstok, technical advisor to L’Oréal, is in perfect agreement with Afzar, but he believes that commerce is just the first of men’s concerns. Social networking, he says, plays just as important a role. “In the age of the selfie, Facebook, Instagram and matrimonial websites, men are fast reduced to their image.”

It isn’t quite clear if L’Oréal soothed men’s insecurities when it launched its range of Homme products in India five years ago. The company, though, appeared to have found a balm for man’s manifold tragedies — hairfall, dandruff, chest hair. “Before 2010, men used the same products as women. We wanted to change that. Now every neighbourhood salon offers hair and skin treatments,” claims Phunstok. The recent shift in men’s attitudes toward their appearance has been driven by factors even more substantive.

“Men don’t live in a bubble anymore. They travel the world. They are tuned into global fashion and international media. A sense of style isn’t inherent, but Indian men are certainly trying very hard,” says senior stylist Rupa Moktan at Kolkata’s popular salon AN John. Her trade, she concludes, is also doubling as that final leveller. “Whether a man or a woman, we are as careful with both. Hair is no longer gendered. We all want to be a cut above.”

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