Managing Locks In a Lockdown

The lockdown, apart from being unprecedented, has also tried us in ways that were never put to the test before. Much of the conversation, when the lockdown began, centred at times on trivialities like the economy, the social and mental health aspects  and at other times on more existential things like surviving without domestic help and whether one was adequately stocked up with Maggi noodles. As the days passed though, I’ve realized that there has been one super-question towering above all these and that humankind at large has been preoccupied with the issue of managing our locks during the lockdown. Not the ones on our doors. The ones on our scalp. Or the ones that used to be on the scalp, in some cases. Yes, it’s all been about Hair Management.

 

One would have thought that with age, one’s scalp and facial hair would be the least of concerns – it ought to be fine if left to itself, right? Except that, the amount of management time I was putting into it has clearly dawned on me post the lockdown…

 

Initially I thought that a few weeks of not visiting the barber was cool – a period of bliss, even. In any case, it’s a lockdown right, so who cares about physical appearance? Even if I was having a series of bad hair days, who would notice! The first few days of the lockdown proved me absolutely right – no shaving, no trimming, no hair care of any kind and things were cruising along. I was beginning to feel I was well ahead of the game, especially since I had remembered to upstock on Maggi Noodles!

 

But unbeknownst to me, dark clouds were lurking. Somewhere into the second week of the lockdown, I first came upon the word “Zoom”. Generally, my encounters with this particular English word had till then been neutral to mildly positive. All this was now set to change, as suddenly I had to show myself on the screen during meetings. People make light of this by suggesting benefits like being in shorts with none being the wiser for it. This is true, unless of course you reflexively get up to answer the doorbell without switching the video off. But the general point is true - you can get off with any kind of attire, you don’t need to wear shoes, socks, watches and, the most difficult of all, color-coordinate the overall getup and stuff like that. Hell, by finding the appropriate angle on your laptop camera, you can even mask the dirty T-shirt you’re wearing. But I challenge you to find any angle where the video does not show your facial or scalp hair! 

 

So, while I could allow myself to descend into decadence in every which way, the hair had to be all spic and span failing which there would be a rapid erosion of my corporate reputation.

 

Now, there are many fellows who probably are feeling at this stage that I’m making a big deal of nothing. In fact, even ruffled, unkempt hair is nowadays acceptable, so what’s the big deal, right? Well, chances are, most of the people who feel that way are likely to be in that blissful side of the forties where Time has not yet started to play out its sinister machinations on their appearance...

 

Indulge me a bit while I detour into a short backstory. Many many summers ago, in the blissful insouciance of youth, one of my favourite lines was that one needs to age gracefully. It seemed like such a cool thing to say then. However, as the years passed by, resulting in a rather significant level of wear and tear, I found myself increasingly question this maxim. Finally one day in the salon, feeling overwhelmed by the mushrooming of the grey matter on my scalp, I succumbed. L’Oreal number 3, I think it was. And just like that, it felt like I was suddenly given back five years of my life. Incidentally, I learnt the hard way that it was useful to know the exact specifications (hence L’Oreal number 3) of the stuff being applied on my hair, in case I had to get the job done by strange barbers in unknown lands during my business travels. A casual approach like “Merawala Cream” doesn’t quite cut it.

 

Initially, it was great going. Up until a certain age, one can mask the hair paint-job by pretending that one has been naturally endowed with jet black hair. Hell, I used to get away by staunchly maintaining that it’s all down to green vegetables, lots of water and avoiding smoking! But inevitably, as the physical appearance starts to lose its youthfulness, then its middle-agedness and as one stands on the threshold of senior-citizendom, these manufactured reasons, much like the hair itself, start wearing thin. As the Poet said, “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive”! It’s extremely difficult to credibly pull off a look where the scalp has about 40 or 50 strands of hair which are all jet black!

 

This is when the battle begins between hanging on to the illusion versus giving up on the whole thing and going all grey like even George Clooney and Milind Soman are doing these days. Except that it’s all fine if you’re George Clooney or Milind Soman! L’Oreal number 3, I learnt, is an inexorable mistress. Once it sinks its fangs into you, you’re pretty much done for. There is no middle ground. Either you continue the paint-job at regular intervals or you just stop. And as the greying accelerates, the paint-job, like an addiction, needs to become more frequent if pretences are to be maintained…

 

Cut back to the present. Now you can imagine the stress generated by weeks or potentially even months of not visiting the salon for a quick touch up of the hair. The unkindest cut is when a colleague stares at you on his or her screen and remarks with a catty glint in the eye that something about you seems different!

 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t end with the scalp hair. Your facial hair adds just that extra bit of complexity that makes life look like a CSK run chase. So here’s a decision that you’re faced with every morning – do you shave today or not? This one’s not to be trifled with. It’s easy to say that we can stop shaving and just grow a beard. Beards are in fashion these days, anyway. My rejoinder would simply be that this response is an outcome of a very superficial analysis. What price the color of the beard, then, as compared to the color of your hair? You could try an Amitabh Bachchan kind of look, with all black hair and grey beard, but then again you could pull it off provided, yes you guessed right, you’re Amitabh Bachchan! So it’s either shave every day or go the Bachchan way or more application of L’Oreal 3, this time on the facial hair too…

 

A few close friends, inspired by our PM’s cry of being “Aatmanirbhar”, have even tried self-help at home with rather disastrous results. Sometimes I wonder how women manage this. Given their lack of facial hair, they have fewer variables to contend with and one would suspect they would have found a way. But a quick, stealthy glance at the sprouts of grey along the hair parting on the scalp gives the game away – this problem is rather egalitarian and does not discriminate on the basis of gender. Women are equally to be pitied…

 

There are those though, who have put the lockdown to good use and have gone back to the drawing board, reengineered the locks and the overall appearance. So on the one hand, we have our Prime Minister, who has achieved the twin objectives of reducing the frequency of the beard trimming while managing to look like an austere, ascetic man with infinite wisdom; an image that helps combating the fall-out from his various 8 pm announcements. On the other, we have Rahul Gandhi going for the wavy hair look, trying to look like his father for some unfathomable reason. 

 

Finally, the unlockdown happened. Before I go further, that word unlockdown is sheer genius. From now on, I’m going to unstart my car when I reach my destination and unclose the door when I return home! In any case, I was able to have my tearful reunion with my barber and get the status quo ante restored and all’s well that, at least for now, ends well. But I worry. I worry that there seems to be no solution in sight. The best and brightest minds are working on other challenges of the modern age, leaving us at the mercy of charlatans. Next time there’s a lockdown type event, we’re going to be sitting ducks again. I’ve thought of all kinds of possible solutions, but most of them sound quite “hair-brained” and have failed to pass the test of feasibility in my mind. COVID has set the world thinking about various new business in the wake of the pandemic – tools around working from home, more e-commerce and stuff of that nature. If anyone can find an answer to this universal problem that can be implemented at a commercial scale, please connect with me and we can go build the next unicorn…