A Strangers Touch
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Barnali pushed the tinted glass door and stepped in.It was cool and dark inside. The din and bustle of the street was suddenly replaced by a hushed stillness. Gradually, some objects came into view-a row of high backed chairs facing a wall length mirror, a gleaming white Formica counter running along the length of the mirror. On the far-end of the low-ceilinged room, a curved wooden staircase leading upstairs. On the side facing the massive mirror was a sagging sofa of faded velvet, green in colour, with a single glass-topped table in front of it. A stack of magazines lay heaped untidily over it. A stale smell of nicotine mingled with after shave-hung in the confined space like a miasma.
Barnali licked her dry lips as a tremor passed through her body. The body sensed danger even before the mind did. The skin on her arms felt cold and the pupils of her eyes seemed to dilate and search the shadows with a sudden wariness. Some part of her willed her to swing open the glass door, return to the noise, the sunshine, the ordinariness of everyday experience. But greater than that was the will to be sucked into this heart of darkness. A man came down the narrow, twisting staircase at the back of the long room. He had heard her coming in and his· steps were swift, expectant. He was a young man, with a squat, powerful torso encased in a tight black T shirt. A folded towel hung from his left shoulder. Thick, curly hair framed his lean, tanned face and a well-trimmed moustache gave him a faintly rakish air. He crossed the floor towards her with a slight swagger, conscious of her eyes on him. His smile was friendly, almost intimate
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"This is Plaza Saloon?" her voice sounded shrill in the shadowy, confIned space. "Do you cut ladies' hair?"
"Yes, yes," he said, nodding quickly, "This is both gents and ladies beauty and hair-cutting saloon. Our ladies specialist . has gone for lunch. You sit here, Madam, she will come."
"Oh." She looked at her wristwatch, then out through the glass door to the street. The man moved cat-like, noiselessly around the room, flicking all the switches on the wall. At once the saloon was bathed with light. Fans started whirring. Lamps with gaudy brass fittings glowed from wall brackets. Adjustable lights shot beams of blinding light from the top of the wall mirror. Men in spandex briefs and Ray-Ban glasses sneered from posters. Aishwarya Rai smiled enigmatically from one comer, her hair falling in satin waves over a white lace dress. Bamali's eyes began to hurt.
"She will come just now, Madam." His tone was soft, gently pursuasive. "You can sit here." He swiftly rearranged the magazines on the table and gestured towards the sofa.
She had seen a woman when the young man had flicked on the lights. A woman staring back at her from the mirror. A woman daring her to flinch, to look away in shame, and defeat. A thirty-five year old matron, stodgy and commonplace, wearing a printed sari with a mismatched kmg-sleeved blouse, half-moons of sweat staining her arm pits. A woman with a limp, tired mass of hair carelessly tied back with a cheap wool band, a pair of sad, defeated eyes - that gave away nothing, only the weariness of a life lived for others, of days, months and years merging into a blurred routine of thankless tasks and dying dreams.
Once, that woman had been a girl, once that woman had known what it was to dream and laugh and move her limbs in ways that made dazed men follow her with their eyes. Once, her hair too had fallen in soft, dark waves to her waist. Once, that dull skin shared the velvety softness of unfolding petals. The waist had been a slender stalk then, rising proudly from the ripe swell of her hips. The breasts had been fIrm, thrusting tautly against the blouses that fought to hold them back, Strangers had brushed against her on sidewalks, murmuring hoarse endearments. An uncle had held her tight one long ago aftemoon, twisting
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her face so that he could kiss her, burying his face in her hair with a tortured groan, just a room away from where his wife was suckling their newborn child.
The young man stood leaning against a high-backed chair. The towel was gone and he jingled a bunch of keys in his right hand. He looked at the road through the tinted glass door. His brow was furrowed and he made a clicking sound with his tongue.
"This girl," he spat out the words in disgust. "No consideration for customers."
"Is she always late?" Barali put down the magazine she had been idly leafing through.
"No, no Madam," he said hastily. "Otherwise she is a good girl. Today her boyfriend came from Nagaon. Other days she brings tiffin from home."
She glanced at her wrist watch again. It was ten to one.
Priyanka came home at three forty-five by the school bus. There was noodle and fried chicken in the casserole, waiting for her, and Cartoon Network on television. Four BarbIe dolls sat primly on a bedroom shelf; Her school friends would telephone throughout the evening. Enough distractions to blot out the awareness of an absent mother. .. Deepankar would be late as usual... there were some things in life she could rely on, and his after-work drinking sessions with friends was one of them ...
"I will get you something, Madam?" he bent over her "Thums up, Mirinda? Or will you like chai, special chat? Mahabir Mistaan Bhander's tea is really good. It is nearby."
"No, thanks." She managed a fleeting, wintry smile. "I' m alright. I'll wait."
When one could expect nothing, nothing at all from one's. family, the kindness of stangers surprised and moved her to tears. Years ago, she had been travelling by bus from Bharalumukh to Silpukhuri. It was a sweltering June evening.~ She was six months pregnant and the monthly appointment with the gynaecologist had been long overdue. Deepankar was furious that she should ask him to accompany her. Didn't she know how much work was pending at the office? Did he even have time to visit the denist for
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the toothache that kept him awake at night? So she had gone alone, crushed among other bodies in a jam-packed city bus, fighting to keep her balace and shield her swollen stomach from the pushing and shoving, clamping a handkerchief to her month as waves of nausea rose up her throat .
Somewhere near Pan Bazar, a man seated on one of the last seats noticed her plight. A thin, stooping man with gray hair and a long, lined face that still looked boyish. There was pity and concern in his eyes as he rose hurriedly, almost clumsily, anxious to give up his place for her. Sinking down to the seat, she had flashed a weak, grateful smile at him, but he had looked away shyly. Years later, she recognised the face of the kind stranger on the back cover of a book of poems. He was Hiren Bhattacharyya, the poet. Even today she read every poem of his that she could find in magazines and anthologies.
Sorrow sicks on to blood/In the unheard cloud of my tears/ It's forever your face ... She willed herself to believe he wrote such words for her. Mter all, poets could sense things in a few fleeting moments what other men would take a lifetime to comprehend.
Within moments, the man had discreetly made the arrangements so that she could feel at home. A small boy placed a steaming tumbler of sweet, milky tea on a table near her. It seemed rude to refuse. The man moved quietly around the room as she drank her tea in small, nervous sips. He sprayed Colin on the wall mirror, the nozzle hissing as the liquid spread in tiny jets across the glass. He wiped the Formica counter with a moist rag, in swift, energetic strokes. He seemed to take a great pleasure in his movements, carefully putting back the combs, clips and brushes onto the bright canary yellow plastic holders, pulling open and shutting the drawers under the counter. She stared bypnotized at his strong capable hands, aware of their sinewy strength and the effortless ease with which he handled the objects around him.
"Do you also cut ladies hair?" she asked. He stopped humming and looked at her.
"Yes," he smiled, "Some ladies are not comfortable with
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gents hairdressers. Do you want me to? I was trained at Enis, Madam, Enis in Calcutta".
"Alright," She rose from the sofa. "It is getting late. I cannot wait so long. And I may not be able to come again"
"What cut do you want?"
"I don't know. Just make it short. I have had long hair all my life."
He took out a couple of fresh snow-white towels from a low wardrobe next to the sofa. She moved uncertainly towards a high-backed chair, running her hand over her hair.
"It's my daughter," she confided quietly. "She laughs at the way I tie my hair. She wants me to have a modem style. Even little girls know all that .. ," She trailed off, averting her eyes.
It was not true. One does not tell the truth to a stranger, Priyanka did more than laugh at her hairstyle. She had lashed out at her like a flerce little animal, her small face pale with rage and her eyes ablaze with a hate that seemed to bum with a blinding white heat. Her shrill sobbing words still rang in Bamali's ears; I hate you! Why don't you die? Don't come to school on Parents Day. My friends laugh at you. That's why I don't call them home. Look at your stupid bun. None of their mothers look like you. Why can't you look nice, like them.?"
"I'll have to wash your hair first," he said. "It's too oily. then I'll cut it shoulder-length. A simple u-cut. It will be easy to maintain. You can trim it once in three weeks."
"Alright."
She followed him up the marrow wooden stairs, deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. All at once she seemed to be weightless, floating behind him, unaware of her body, or even of what her life was before she entered the saloon. Then he motioned her through a low curtained doorway into a tiny cubicle. He seated her in a cushioned seat whose foam contours fitted every curve of her torso. He covered her with one of the large towels, pinning it expertly on the nape of her neck, gently lifting her mass of hair and untying the woollen band and loosening her tangled tresses. She closed her eyes and felt the tiny prickle of a shiver run down
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her spine. A scent of flowers filled the air as he uncorked a shampoo and carefully poured the fragrant green liquid into a bowl, placing it beside the black marble sink before her. She bent obediently over the rim of the basin as he opened the tap and ran the hose of cold water over her scalp. The fragrance of the shampoo was now sharp against her nostrils. He was now working up a lather on her hair. His fingers rubbed her scalp, strong, yet gentle, trying not to pull the tangled hair and hurt her. Round and round, the fingers moved in widening circles on her head, his voice coaxing her to bend lower, to turn her face sideways. The fingers rubbed her earlobes, unclasping her ear tops, and then rubbing the vermilion on the parting of her hair. She could hear him breathe hard due to the exertion, and feel the soft mound of his abdomen pressed against her right shoulder. She lost all sense of time as he lathered her, the gleaming, weightless suds floating onto the black basin. She kept her eyes tightly closed, feeling a feverish heat rise to her cheeks and a delicious langour fill her limbs.
Then he rinsed her hair for the final time. She leaned back, dripping, exhausted, as he held up her hair with a towel, covering it completely, soaking in the water. He dried her hair with another towel, rubbing her head energetically, Some of the water had run down between the valley of her breasts and down her back. She looked at him, and then at herself, in the mirror before the basin. His eyes were on her hair, lost in a sort of tender absorption that nobody had ever showed to her before. It made her feel beautiful, desired, and as if the world was not such a bad place after all. Then she felt the sharp little pricks of hair clips on her scalp, his fingers brushing against her cheeks, forehead, her neck. The scissors were clicking around her, the metal crunching on her hair, and masses of hair falling over her shoulders, dark against the white towel. Then the hair-drier was whirring in his hands, lulling her to this pleasant, dream like stupor with its low, steady drone. Gusts of warm air moved all around hair, steadily drying the segments of hair he held up so gently and with such tenderness. She wanted to sit there forever, wrapped in that white cocoon, caught in the spell of this wordless bond with this man, this stranger,
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who touched her with such intimacy, reminding her she was a woman alive, responsive, quivering at his slightest touch, sharing a language of silence so perfect it needed no
words .
He was now running his comb through her shortened hair, his eyes narrowed as he checked the length of each strand.
"Do you like it?"
She looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes widened.
This was a different woman who had walked into the saloon two hours earlier. The magic of his hands had made her younger, someone much more interesting. And yes, something had changed in her face too .... A secret gleam in her eyes, a fullness in her lips, a certain pride in the way she held up her chin.
"Yes," she murmured. "Oh yes."
He removed the towel from her, brushing away the hair that stuck to her arms. She smiled at him and lowered her eyes, trying to conceal the sheer animal pleasure that coursed through her.
They climbed down the stairs wordlessly. Her steps were a little drunk. Downstairs, she fumbled at her purse, feeling the fever leave her cheeks, feeling a sharp little stab of regret that the spell must be broken, that she must return to her world.
He took the money with a courtly bow, stuffing it quickly into the back pocket of his trousers.
The glass door at the entrance swung open and a girl entered entered the saloon. She was in a great hurry and the door swung noisily behind her. She was tall and slim~ dressed in a short black skirt and a red top that clung to her curves. When she saw him, her full, painted lips curved into a gay smile.
"Oh, am I late?" she asked breathlessly "The traffic ... " "No, no, I was waiting."
He handed Barnali the change without even looking at her. His eyes were on the girl and his face already wore that same gentle absorbed expression that had been for her only zp.oments ago.
She silently watched them go up the wooden stairs at the far end of the room, the girl swinging her hips as she moved, and he bringing up the rear, close behind her, a fresh white towel on his shoulder, finally disappearing into the heart of darkness.
When she pulled the knob of the glass door to let herself out, she noticed that her hand was trembling.
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