Nation’s finest economists, social reformers, educationalists can be found at two places. The first is a salon and the other is saloon. While getting a moustache chopped off, the thoughts about the devastated economy creeps up and the man in his late sixties, who can barely speak English, comes up with a talk about “Slow Markat”. Everyone jumps in and the conversation becomes a debate with the barber leaving the razors and participating with unsurpassed enthusiasm. The debate hardly gets finished when another turbaned, frail and “formally uneducated” comes up with the decreasing rate of literacy in countryside of the state. Here I am waiting for the barber to give me a nice haircut but to my surprise he is happier to give his two cents worth on literacy rate of the country. I also surrendered and thought of giving these commoners an ear or maybe both I have. What I observe was plain and simple; we all have words but lack a platform to speak them out. Some find it in the prayer assembly of high school, some at college youth fests, a few at party after a bottle of beer or two or ten and the rest resort to public places where their wrong opinion won’t earn them a laughter or criticism.
After about 40 minutes of wait I gave up and decided to ‘request’ for a haircut. The barber seemed confronted but gave me a grin and said in his native language, something that meant ‘we all are politicians in disguise’. I gave an affirmative nod and pointed towards my hair and beard and laughed out loud. The atmosphere which once was saturated with opinions, debates and serious talks was now quiet and all that could be heard was the sound of the hair trimmer. I seriously felt as if I did the biggest mistake of my life by interrupting in the debate of some of the greatest minds of my country. Anyways I got my haircut and a piece of word to write about. Here I am again staring at my groomed face and muddled psyche. Guess what! I have a higher opinion of my beard and my barber this day onwards.
It all makes it
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