1
Small saloon in the
corner of hectic road. Peoples walking with big mustache, beard, long styled
hair, some curlies, some straight, some dread locked, some as straight as pine
leaves, porcupine thrones. Does hairstyle reflect person’s personality? What
about attitude? Mansoor may not have a proper answer for this kind of question
but he can nod and say something out of his deep experience. May be the person
who share their stories might have certain impact upon him while he move his
scissor and comb on their different styled hair. He may have been shaving his
pain like a razor blade over their face. Hair and beard grows time and again.
Same is the pain. May be his pain grows faster than the sluggish beard. His
youthful and meek face may not have the wrinkles of sadness but nobody knows
how many times he has massaged his own mind during those painful moments he had
endured. People come to have facial and always envy him about the money he
earns. They are mostly those people who are still having the grains strewed by
their parents. Unemployed and a true addict of cigarette and weeds. Their
dreams are like cigarette fumes. Decaying life. Unconscious in a trance state
aided by weeds. Mansoor knows his work but forgets his health because he has to
open his shop, pay the rent of shop and his room so he never has a time to eat
properly. He is single but he always find himself in midst of the crowd. Even when
he returns back to his room late at night he carries that crowd within himself.
So he is never a lonely guy. His old mother often calls him and pleads for
money. He has to send some money to his village. He don’t want to recall those
,starry nights of thunder and heavy downpour where he was compelled to sleep
with hunger glancing at the leaked roofs of his small hut. Hunger didn't scare
him that time. A howling and forcing wind scared him which could have anytime
blown his feeble roof.
“Hay Mansoor?” Why
don’t you change that music?” A commanding and little annoying voice shifted
his attention towards the Old cassette player which his father had bought long
before he died of cholera when mansoor was small.
An oily person of mid 30
was sitting on a tool and with half shaved beard his reflected images on the
mirror resembled that of a betrayed fool. Mirror wasn't clean. There were
patches of dirt stuck like an artistic dot. If one would glance at it deeply
they would find different images which was barely conceivable.
A melodious Hindi song
reverberated in the room. He seems to have been enjoying it. So he slowly
closed his eyes while mansoor began shaving rest of his beard.
Seldom people ask him to
change the music. Changing music is not a hard job for mansoor, he is not even
unwilling to do that, but the hard thing is to fulfill the desire of every
customer who enters in saloon with their own kind of desire to look good in
every possible way. He can feel their aesthetic needs. People are gifted with
their kind of beauty but they want to embrace the beauty of other.
“How much?”
His face looked like a
ragged jeans after shaving. He leisurely puts his hands in the back pocket,
took out 50 rs note and lifted on the air giving an unsure look.
“Yes its 50” Mansoor
replied just dredging a towel and putting it back on the chair.
Then a ragged face guy
took away his red sun-glass parked on the wooden desk. He didn't smile back.
Mansoor has glued
the colorful posters of Bollywood slinky and seducing actress on the patchy
walls of the saloon. It aids in stimulating sensual feelings of the customer.
It seems as those images calmly hold them for a quarter or an half on the
wooden high backed uncomfortable chair. Music works as an ingredient or some
kind of additives for fidgeted heart.
Those rough and tough
guys strolling around the saloon gives bad headache to mansoor. They have made
saloon their usual junction for talking mundane things that doesn't make much
sense for the ideal person. Their baleful glance and nasty outlook often
frighten him .Their very presence in the saloon is like a possible landslide,
huge volcanic havoc and terrorizing symptoms of possible earthquake for the
feeble heart like Mansoor’s. His hearts beats in a distressful pace, his hands
shakes and anger boils inside as they enter into the saloon and use his spray,
combs, towels and creams without any kind of formal request or permission. He
is aware of the fact that they can be dangerous to him anytime so he has
smothered his voice and curbed his courage.
2
Today the sun is
cloaking beside the cloud. Mansoor knows that it’s already morning..His mobile
is out of breath. Begging for battery life. There’s not so much gloomy outside
as compared to the gloominess of mansoor’s mind. He has a little sickness
escalating from the toes to his head making him look little bit blue and dull
on his bed. Yesterday he forgot his lunch, worked like a Himalayan yak or meek
donkeys. Ate his dinner at 10 and it was like chopping a big whale into tiny
pieces and then eating like a vulture who doesn't know anything about the
culture.
He wore his full sleeve
shirt. Orange like an orange. Checkered orange. White and orange. It’s like
replacing the black with orange in a chessboard. When mansoor reached at
his shop, he glanced at his watch. Needles are resting on the 9 and 12.Small
brother resting on 9 and big brother resting on 12.Big brother is desperately
waiting for the lean brother doing round ups.
He pushed his shutter.
It was hard to push. It needed some grease for sure. Mansoor may have
acknowledged it but he always forgets. He usually gets lost in his
routine. There were no vehicles today. He didn't see much people walking on the
street. He watched around. Shops were closed. Some half open. Cat or dogs could
easily pass through them. But he saw people over there making transactions .He
couldn't understand things going around him. Is it a strike today? Some kind of
bandha’s? who did it anyway? For what? Will they compensate him for that? He
has to pay 400 per day as a rent to the house owner. Do house owner excuses him
for this particular day? No he won’t. Mansoor didn't want to go back to his
room closing his shop just because it’s a strike. He is earning his living by
hard work. He toils around all day long for his living, for his family. He
couldn't understand why such kind of strikes is snatching the bread of an
honest laborer? One group goes in the power, escalates and dwells in a big
tower. With binoculars they watch layman. They haven’t yet observed the real
pain of the people in a microscope. There are numerous sides of people and
there are numerous slides of pain, of suffering, of dreams, of desires, of wish
which needed to be placed in the microscope of the state and observed
thoroughly.
Mansoor didn't get
chance to ruminate much. He feels as his right to think has been infringed by
some strange noises. It soars high like a violent storm hitting the unbolted
door. He finds the section of brick smacked at his shop which comes with the
nerve-wrecking motions sliding at his feet. Angry crowds enter his shop with
the big wooden stick. Mirrors fall into pieces like his heart. Helpless
chair lies prostrate on the floor. Blood comes sprouting from his head. He
couldn't understand what those angry faces are yelling at him. He just finds
chunks of frustration dotted in their face like an indelible stain. He finds
his eardrum resonating a peculiar sound. Then the crowd leaves. He lies there
on the floor like a lifeless chair.
