3 in 6,000,000: A Visit to the Saloon

(No, that is not a typo)

You may have noticed from the Srimangal pictures that both Jon and Atticus had pretty long hair. Both needed a haircut pretty bad, and while Jon usually just uses clippers to do his own, we didn’t bring clippers and haven’t seen any for sale around here.

Jon asked our friend who lives nearby and he said the “saloon” right in the shopping center by our house was cheap and clean. Yes, saloon. Somewhere, sometime, somehow the translation got screwed up and salons in Bangladesh began being called Saloons. There are hundreds of signs all around for this saloon and that saloon. (This is one of many of these types of "banglish" words.)

So one afternoon between bangla class and picking up Atticus from school, Jon and Sam stopped by to get Jon’s haircut at the men’s saloon here in our neighborhood. Of course there were about 15 workers there, because there are always tons of workers everywhere, and right away he was whisked behind the glass while Sam waited in the lobby.

The guy didn’t speak a lot of English, but not much was needed (Jon thought). Just a buzz. Well, he didn’t buzz it but he gave him a close cut and used the straight razor on the edges with an admirable degree of skill. (This was a little nerve-racking at first, but he really handled it well).

After the cut, he holds up a container of oil capsules in Jon’s face and says ‘Do you want hot oil?’ ‘Na, Na, Na’ Jon says. Then he holds up a bottle that says ‘conditioner’ and says ‘Do you want this?’ ‘Na, Na, Na’ Jon says again. Then the guy leans in really close, and practically whispers in Jon’s ear, ‘You have a dry scalp problem. This will help.’ It is as if he has just revealed a terrible dirty secret and he doesn’t want anyone to know about the shameful presence of dryness on Jon’s head.
‘OK, fine. Conditioner is fine.’ Jon says, thinking well, what can a quick conditioning hurt?

The guy then squirts some of the “conditioner” into a bowl- it is oil. He then places the oil in the oven. Meanwhile, he takes those same capsules Jon had explicitly rejected earlier and squirts them on Jon’s head and rubs it around. He then takes the oil out of the oven (surprisingly not that hot) and rubs it into the scalp. It was a little nice to have the scalp and temple massage.

Meanwhile, he is calling over to another worker who is hauling over a machine that looks kind of like the big hairdryers that salons have that you sit under. This one is mobile though, and there was nothing dry about it. He places a piece of Kleenex on Jon’s forehead and turns the machine on. It emits steam, and apparently, more oil. Needless to say, the Kleenex was just gross and soggy on Jon’s forehead.

After he removes the machine, he asks if Jon wants a shampoo. At this point, Jon just wants to leave. ‘Na, Na, Na.’ Jon says and the guy cleans up and he heads out front. Sam is quite taken aback by the oily emergence of Jon. “Oh’ she managed to say, ‘did you get the hot oil treatment?’ So, 400 taka later Jon has short hair, and is covered in oil.

The worse part was walking home while it was kind of hot and the oil got heated back up and was running down the sides of Jon’s face and neck. He got home, and Sam was only able to snap a few photos before he showered it all out.
Here is a photo of Jon’s hair BEFORE he washed it. That’s right, his hair is not wet in this picture- that is all oil.

So, later we went to the same place (the haircut was fine and the hot oil was, in fairness, what Jon did agree to) to get Atticus a haircut. Things were much less dramatic this time. The best was the makeshift booster seat for him that was just a cushy flat board they laid across the arms of the seat. It worked though. Sam explained that she didn’t want it too short (as you may know, Atticus looks tons better with longer hair, and super short hair just does not work him). Like yours, Sam said, meaning the length, not so much the style. He understood, it seemed, and he gave Atticus a good length – but in his same style. The name of the style, he told us, is the Shahrukh Khan. For those of you that don’t know who Shahrukh Khan is, well, you have clearly never been to South Asia and never seen a hindi film, because he is about as big as it gets in terms of famous-ness. He was also recently detained in an airport in the US for being brown, er I mean for "security reasons." Anyway, now wheenver we look at Atticus we see a little Sharukh Khan.

Here is a photo of Atticus before the cut, and since we don’t have a picture from after (sorry) here is picture of Sharukh Khan with his haircut - sorry it is so small.