Grooming: The quick fix

They do this thing at hair salons, they offer you a choice between a regular stylist or a more experienced “creative stylist” or “senior hair consultant” for a few hundred rupees more. And I always opt for the latter—why risk some intern turning you into a scarecrow when there’s a master craftsman on offer? Besides, you don’t get some fancy title like “creative stylist” for nothing, right?

Wrong. The titles mean nothing. In fact, many of these experienced stylists are imbeciles, and dangerous ones at that—the kind whose titles have gone to their heads and are now as confident as they are cack-handed, liable to dismiss instructions from customers as an insult to their artistry. I’ve suffered these fools at Juice in Bombay, at Looks and Dar in Delhi— some reasonably well-regarded places, in other words—but I’ve no doubt they’re everywhere. And this, dear reader, is a national embarrassment.

Now hold on a minute—let me first dispel the notion that even talking about hair isn’t fitting for men like us—proper men with chest hair and greater concerns like the credit crunch and nuclear proliferation. By this thinking, real men get their haircut by a roadside barber in front of a cracked piece of mirror under a flyover while a line of hobos urinate freely nearby. It all lasts two minutes tops and at some point, the barber will inadvertently slap you about the face. That’s a man’s cut.

But hair is important—appearances matter, surely we don’t have to argue this point any more. And even more than that, it’s an issue. Because the sad fact about modern India is that for all our Infosys and modern weaponry and whatever, you can’t get a decent haircut in this country. Or rather, as a colleague told me recently, “you can get a decent haircut in India, but unless you know the stylist by name, it could be a disaster. Do what I do—schedule your haircuts for when you go abroad.”

Bina Punjani is the Creative Head at Looks Salon in Delhi, the salon that’s been chosen to do the IIFA awards. “I know why people get their haircut abroad,” she shrugs. “Standards are much higher there. Here, it’s so hit and miss. I was trained at Toni & Guy in London and worked there for four years. And the standardisation there comes through training. No one wants to invest in training in this country, business owners don’t see the benefit. That’s why we have foreign salon brands coming into India and charging huge prices. People will pay if they know they’re getting quality.”

What she’s talking about is an all too common malaise—the culture of the quick fix rather than the longterm solution. “The usual story is that it looks great when you come out, full of styling and product,” she says. “But a week later, it’s all over the place. It’s more about styling than cutting.”

So Punjani is attempting to effect a revolution—to train a generation of stylists, raise the bar for hair styling in this country and create a salon brand that can be counted on for a certain minimum quality. To give those fancy titles some meaning, in other words. We wish her luck.