The Shave

One of my fondest memories from childhood had to do with my father’s grooming rituals. Not sure why that is, but I still love the smell of Old Spice aftershave. As a child I loved the feel of his whiskers before he would shave, and I loved to go with him to Ray’s Barber shop to watch him get his hair cut. Like the beauty salon for women, Rays was a place when the men could talk about distinctly guy things. Whose sow delivered the most piglets, the new Ford truck someone just purchased or the way the articles in ‘Playboy’ were so informative and enlightening.

Unfortunately, all this went out the window with the advent of the disposable razor and cheep salons like ‘super clips’, which bring that hometown Walmart feel to the experience. Now grooming is a chore that is done as an after thought and judging from the popularity of the show “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” it would seem that many straight men have giving up grooming all together. The male grooming experience has lost something, at least in America, and I didn’t realize how much I missed that experience until I got a shave last night.

It turns out, Barbershops are still in fashion here in India, and so we had to go in for a shave. Because my barber spoke no English, I was not sure what I had just agreed to, how long it would take or even how much it would cost.

The experience started with a moisturizing for the face. Then he lathered me up, and up and up. When I shave, the lather is something that takes all of ten seconds. He took a good five minutes to really massage the foam into my face. Once my beard of foam was Santa-like in shape and consistency, he broke out the straightedge razor.

We had just gone to the ATM to get money to pay for our hotel and some train tickets. Between us we had 20,000 rupees. It makes me feel rich to say that, but in reality it was less than $250 each. Not a huge amount of money to us, but 20,000 rupees is much more than most Indians will make in a month, so when he put the straight edge to my throat, I tried to push the money from my thoughts in the off chance that he could read minds.

The shave was amazing, and when he was done I started to sit up. He pushed me back into the chair and sprayed sandalwood water in my face. We were far from done. He dried me off and smeared cream the consistency of butter all over my face and began a deep face massage that included some slapping, an eyelid massage, and a face flossing. Again, he wiped my face clean, and I began to sit up. He pushed me back into the chair again and reached for the sandalwood water.
Next came the sandalwood ash treatment. He mixed up a gooey paste made for the ash of sandalwood tree and smeared it all over my face. It felt cool and refreshing. I was then instructed to lay back and relax. The ash would take fifteen minutes or so to dry. It was heavenly. Once they washed the paste off and dried my face, I was allowed to get up.

The treatment was over and my face looked like I as a newborn baby. Ok, a newborn with laugh lines and crows feet. Because of the language barrier, I never got clear on the price before we started the treatment. I had expected such an extensive process like this to cost several hundred rupee, to my surprise it was only fifty rupees, about $1.10. I love this country.