A haircut above the rest: Outdoor allure a win for roadside barbers

While the business of salons and hairdressers has suffered since the pandemic began last year, Delhi/ NCR’s ubiquitous roadside barbers are getting new clients who desperately need a haircut but are fearful of walking into the air-conditioned salons for fear of contracting the Sars-Cov-2 that causes coronavirus disease (Covid-19).

Hari Singh’s roadside salon has been attracting a whole new kind of patrons. Once popular only among construction workers and local vendors, these days one can spot office-goers with unkempt hair, grey roots and scruffy beards waiting in their cars near his shop.

In east Delhi’s Mayur Vihar, Munna Thakur, another roadside barber, also attracts many customers from DDA’s SFS flats located right behind his shop.

“The minimum wait is two hours on weekends. When I came here, all my customers were labourers, vegetable vendors and auto drivers; now quite a few of them are people who live in flats,” says Singh, giving the names of the various multi-storey apartment buildings in the area, where many of his new customers live.

While the business of salons and hairdressers has suffered since the pandemic began last year, Delhi/ NCR’s ubiquitous roadside barbers are getting new clients who desperately need a haircut but are fearful of walking into the air-conditioned salons for fear of contracting the Sars-Cov-2 that causes coronavirus disease (Covid-19).

While Singh, who runs his roadside salon in Greater Noida, does not know much about the epidemiology of Covid-19, he says his customers tell him that an open, roadside establishment like his is much safer than the closed confines of a neighbourhood salon.

“But most bring their own towels, and make sure that I tightly wear my face mask while I give them a haircut or a shave,” says Singh. “Sunday is the busiest day for me as most of the new clients have their off on weekends.”

Sitting on Singh’s high wooden chair with a headrest is a middle-aged man from a nearby apartment. Ask him about his choice of the roadside barbershop and he says, “It is safe, cheap and to my surprise, this barber does as good a job as any I know,” says Atul Saxena who works in an IT company in Noida and has frequently visited Singh’s salon since unlock began last year. So, will he stick with his new hairdresser even after the pandemic? “ I might,” is his laconic reply.

In east Delhi’s Mayur Vihar, Munna Thakur, another roadside barber, also attracts many customers from DDA’s SFS flats located right behind his shop. “Earlier, probably they did not know I existed, now many of them come here and also invite me home for a haircut,” says Thakur, who hails from Gopalganj in Bihar and like most roadside barbers charges only ₹30 for a haircut and ₹15 for a shave, making about ₹400 every day.

“But some of my new customers feel that I charge too little and offer me ₹50 for a haircut; my charges have almost remained the same because most of my old customers are rickshaw pullers and labourers who cannot afford more,” says Thakur, who has been working at the same spot for 10 years.

Unlike Singh’s dressing table in Greater Noida, which has only a few scissors, blades and shaving cream, and an aftershave lotion, Thakur’s has an assortment of shaving creams, lotions, balms, and hairstyling gels of various colours and fragrances of unknown cosmetic brands. “That is cucumber face cream; that is rose water, and this is anti-septic lotion,” he says, holding up all small plastic containers, bottles, and boxes one by one. After getting a shave from me, you feel fresh and completely rejuvenated.”

So, where does he procure all his shaving material from? “A salesman who mostly buys it from Sadar Bazar delivers it every day,” says Thakur. Manish Tenguria, a graphic designer in Mayur Vihar, who is at Thakur’s shop for a haircut, swears by his new barber’s professional skills. “ He gave me a patient hearing about the kind of haircut I wanted. I feared he might make a mess of it, but he got it almost right. There is something salubrious about this open, no-frills salon under the tree, a perfect place for a fast haircut in these times of the pandemic,” says Tenguria.

Many of these roadside barbers are from UP and Bihar, working at the same spot for decades—and they often ask their friends and relatives to run the establishment for them when they take an off and visit their native places. “I have not moved my table even a feet since I set it up here 15 years ago. You can say I am a bit superstitious about it,” says Mohammed Abdul, who runs a barber’s on a Lodi Colony footpath in central Delhi. In 2010, Abdul opened a salon in an Uttam Nagar market, but the business collapsed within two months and he was back at the roadside salon under the tree. “Thankfully, I had asked a relative to run this place while I tested waters in Uttam Nagar. Perhaps working on this footpath is my fate. But I am happy here; the tree saves me from sunlight, and if it rains, I hang a tarpaulin over my chair.”

Most of his customers, Abdul says, come in the mornings and evening, now a lot of them government employees, but he believes that it has more to do with his haircutting skills than their fear of the virus. “I keep abreast of new trends in hairstyle. I am as good as any top hairdresser in the city,” he says with confidence, adding that he is an avid reader, and spends time reading Urdu fiction in the afternoon when his corner of the colony is deserted. “In the evening a lot of my poor customers such as auto-rickshaw drivers and vendors come and pour their hearts out to me, talking about all the joys and sorrows of their lives.”

Most of these roadside barbers open at 7 am and close their shop by 8 in the evening, leaving their wares in the custody of private guards on night duty working at nearby markets, schools, banks, ATMs, and other establishments. “We can open our shop till there is daylight as we do not have electricity. I bought this new chair a few months back for ₹1200 and leave it with a guard in the local community market,” says Raghu Raj, who runs a makeshift salon in Mayur Vihar.

He spent about ₹2000 to start this shop six months back. “I was in working with a catering service, but lost my job during the pandemic,” says Raj, whose shop is not under a tree. He says that, unlike other roadside saloons, he is yet to attract many apartment dwellers. The trick, he has been told by a fellow barber, lies in being under the tree. “Maybe I need to shift under one soon,” he says.