The year began with a dhoom. I usually visit Prof Lokesh for
getting my haircut done. However this new guy inside the shop told me that
professor was off on his annual vacation. Just as I began to turn back he
shouted ‘Basoo, even I cut hair equally well!’
. I wasn’t ready to buy his argument.
Lokesh calls himself professor because he studied Haircutology or
whatever the art is called in some place in Mumbai. He also happened to be the
assistant of a guy who cut Farhan Akhtar’s hair. Lokesh and I share this
unsigned memorandum of mutual understanding where I just go and sit on the hot
seat and say ‘Short’ and let his hands do the magic.
The new guy wasn’t ready to let me go. He shouted again
‘Basoo, give me a chance and you won’t regret ‘. In order to encourage this
newbie, I went and sat on the hot seat. He asked me what I do for a living. I
said that I was doing a postgraduate program in management (MBA is too
mainstream). He questioned what sort of course it was. Well, we study how Star Sports makes money by
airing blade shows like Outstanding Ohja and Master Class Manjrekar. Quickly he
asked ‘Basoo, have you watched Dhoom3?’. I said that I hadn’t watched it though
I actually had, fearing where I would have to become Rajeev Masand for Mr
Barber. Mr Barber said that I ought to watch it . By the way, Basoo or Bosuuu are derived from the root word Boss and translate
as ‘hey bloke’ or ‘wassup bro’ . Anyway, Mr Barber wanted to give me Aamir Khan’s Dhoom
3 haircut. He promised me that it would transform me from a downmarket duckling
in to a Cinderella. 10 minutes in to the cut, he had trimmed the sides neatly
and was working on the middle portion and left it like a bunch of coriander
leaves. He removed the white robe on me
and went on to sip water from a bottle. He said ‘Basoo, you are now ready to go’
. I was looking like one of those balloon sellers outside Palace Grounds. I raised
my hands in protest , was reluctant to go and asked him quickly get in to
disaster management mode.
Mr Barber then showed me a chart that was pasted on his
wall. It looked exactly like the ‘Animals’ &‘Plants’ charts that school going
kids use for their assignments. 4 rows by 4 columns i.e. 16 expressionless guys
sporting tacky hairstyles. He said that the only possible way by which we could
avert disaster would be to make modifications to the Dhoom cut and make me look
like the guy on the (3,2) grid. This haircut was like Bhindi Bazaar meets Time
square types. With no option left, I said ‘Ok,
go ahead’ . Finally, after 15 minutes normalcy resumed. Picasso was disappointed
as there were no takers for his art.
In other news, Jai Ho released this weekend. Dear Salamn khan, thank you for making us believe
that even people with low IQ can make money and become successful . May your
movie collections cross the combined GDP of Togo, Mali, Uganda and Burkina
Faso.
