Head Trips

Sometime back, a friend and I were discussing Bollywood in general and then we somehow landed up on the subject of Aditya Pancholi. Oh, okay, if you’ve forgotten him already, refresh your memory with Wikipedia.  The last I heard of him was when he tried to give Kangana Ranaut a lift, the story was she didn’t want it. During the discussion, I was able to ‘regurgitate’ information about him, stuff I’m guessing few track, since she is also a Bollywood buff , but wasn’t able to recollect. No, don’t go away, this post is not about him.

This is about the place that gave me different kinds of education at different stages of my life. A couple of years after I started going to school, I was also deemed responsible enough to go to the nearby barber shop and get myself a haircut. After a few months, it was noticed that the time I took was way longer than warranted. I tried to get away by saying that there was a crowd before me, but my mother had a sneaking suspicion that I was playing cricket for a while before I came home. I wasn’t lying, but she was close to being right too. The barber had realised that I could easily be persuaded to wait, while he dealt even with those who came after me, if he gave me the video games he had. The complete version of the truth was discovered after a few months, when a rather long gaming session caused quite a stir at home, and my gaming education lost its continuity.

In later years, after my childhood faults were forgotten/forgiven and the time I spent outside wasn’t so strictly regulated, it was noticed that  my haircut trips had suddenly regained their lost long duration. Though I claimed I was spending time with guys i knew, my mother had a sneaking suspicion that I was with friends of the opposite gender. I wasn’t lying, but she was again, close. For these trips was also when I caught up with Sridevi, Juhi, Madhuri, Kimi, and later, Raveena, Karishma, Urmila, Manisha etc, in addition to Big B, Mithunda, Jackie Shroff , and later Govinda,  Anil Kapoor, Sanjay Dutt, Chunky Pandey etc –  Filmfare and Stardust were read from cover to cover diligently, and random bits of information about actors and actresses were stored. They were always surprised at home, when I expounded on actors’ and actresses’ lives and the gossip surrounding them, since we never got the magazines at home. Some of the Bollywood education has obviously been retained in the memory bank even after more than a decade.

This magazine habit still continues, despite getting a daily fill thanks to newspapers, TV and the web, who consider Big B catching a cold breaking news. When we move to a new location, and I have to go to a new salon, I make sure that the place is well stacked with magazines. There are so many more sources, and so much more content these days, but reading the magazines is a way of being in touch – with the past.

Meanwhile, my paternal genes attack me from the temples and my maternal genes attack me from the vertex. When it happens, I’ll miss the hair, and the heady education, the haircuts provide. 🙂

until next time, fountainhead 🙂