Some amusing changes

The first to go was the neighbourhood barber shop, where one would head for a fortnightly crop to the accompaniment of soppy Bollywood music — a standard feature of salons no matter whether in Jaipur, Pathankot or New Delhi. The change came overnight, local entrepreneurs as well as international stylists taking over the beauty business. They were uniformed in cowboy gear, their hair-cutting equipment cross-hatched to their waists like gun slings. Senior citizens with receding hairlines bored them. They much preferred the millennials who did not mind a tint, or a severe tonsure, or strange indentations across the scalp, and they made more in tips than in salaries (I know because I asked). At the old barber shops, you had an assigned favourite who’d thrown in a head massage for free, knew where you worked, and would exchange news about the family as acquaintances might at a wedding. At these new-fangled hairdressers’, it was increasingly difficult to find someone who still cut tresses the old-fashioned way with scissors and comb, instead of machines, and you were allotted a new person every time according to a serial number, and charged extra if they as much snipped an errant strand from the eyebrow.

Some changes are welcome, others amusing, a few alarming. Our newspaper “boy” is now a “man” who does his deliveries on a motorcycle. The vegetable seller has a motorised cart with a canopy. The “chotus” of the local kirana no longer come on bicycles. Courier deliverers take signatures on a hand-carried electronic gadget. 

The chemist’s shop changed too, sometimes replaced — but never overwhelmed — by pharmacy chains that are more efficient but rarely as friendly. You queue up, collect your medicines and toiletries, get a membership discount, pay by card, all in a mechanical way. What you miss is the friendly banter of shop owners who suggested new unguents and potions, could recommend medicines in an emergency, and were quick to admonish you should they think you were over-medicating yourself. I remember one person ticking me off because deodorant aerosols, he reminded me, were burning a hole through the ozone layer. 

At least one apothecary close to my office has moved to remedy this. Popular for its location as well as his staff’s ability to order medicines that were not readily available had earned him his customers’ loyalty. But with youngsters preferring to order their medicines online, and getting substantial discounts in the bargain, this chemist decided to up the game by improving his services. He hired sales girls of questionable efficiency whose job, it appeared, was to push beauty products on which it had a presumably better bottom line. You’d ask for a toothpaste, and they’d offer you a dozen options by way of choice, then urge you to choose the most expensive, or take home a couple more than you required. 

The only way to counter it was to avoid eye-contact, but a few days ago I was startled when my request for a hand lotion I preferred was thwarted. Instead, my arm was seized, cream from a bottle was squirted on the back of my hand, and then massaged in by a sales girl. “There,” I was asked, “isn’t this better?” Maybe it was, I wanted to say, but the sales pitch had made me feel acutely uncomfortable. Not only did I feel cornered, here was an instance that could be easily misrepresented as harassment. The old ways might have been lax, but they were preferable to today’s strident aggression that stands in for professionalism.