Hi,
It has finally happened. I can no longer be on a video call without someone on the other side pointing out that the hair on my head and my face have started to merge, like a tropical canopy that blocks out the sun. Even without these friendly nudges, I’ve been thinking about my neighbourhood barber – and not just because I miss his superior skills with the scissors, his robust head massage with cooling oil, and the one hour of pure relaxation against the background of cheesy Bollywood music.
Barbers and their clients are known to be loyal to each other. I have been visiting my current barber for eight years now, since he was an employee at someone else’s shop. I met him in his final week there, and he whispered in my ears during a beard trim job that he wanted to start out on his own.
Last year, he floated SR Men’s Saloon, a small but cheerful space smelling of aftershave lotion and stocked with lots of celebrity gossip magazines. I remember the pride with which he welcomed me, an old friend, into his new shop bedecked with red and white furniture, verses from the Quran hanging on the wall in golden frames, fresh towels invitingly rolled up on a shelf. He pressed my hands to say thanks and offered me the extra-sweet tea reserved for faithful clients in old-fashioned Indian marketplaces.
"This is your shop," he told me after my haircut. "Come again."
I wonder how the enterprising proprietor of SR Men’s Saloon is doing now. His shop has been closed for two months. There is no guarantee it can resume business any time soon, and even if it does, who knows how long it will take for his clientele to regain confidence in community scissors and towels. Things must be stressful for him. Does he have someone who can give him a first-class massage to beat the stress out of his head?
Different room. Same story
A few blocks from the barber shop sits another service provider I see regularly: our family physician. He is the antithesis of the barber – quiet, sometimes frustratingly quiet, prioritising efficiency over banter. I’ve often grumbled that he never smiles, but he does possess the remarkable ability of putting me at ease by expending minimum words, with a grunt and a small wave of the hand meant to dismiss my fears about a blood or urine report.
After a hiatus of a few weeks, the doctor has returned to his clinic. Given his usual demeanour, it is impossible to tell if the pandemic has affected his mood. But I can’t imagine he’d be at ease. Medical professionals have always been at high risk of mental distress, and this ill-kept secret has leapt out of the shadows in the past few months.
"Now death is our greeter," a wellness specialist in New Orleans wrote in a poem on the pandemic.
Barber shops and doctors’ clinics represent something far beyond their primary functions. They are safety valves for society, each in their own way helping to release a bit of the pressure that relentlessly pounds modern life. When these edifices of care start to crumble, we need to worry because it could signal the onslaught of what the Kenyan writer Njoki Ngumi calls a "compassion crisis" in her powerful debut essay for us.
Who cuts the barber’s hair? Who heals the healer? These are no longer quandaries for philosophers. These are moral questions for each one of us.
Are you worried about the wellbeing of people like these in your neighbourhoods? Write to me with their stories.
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