After the scolding by the headmistress, we wondered if our boys needed a haircut. Well, they needed it anyway, and this was a convenient opportunity to check out the spangled and fascinating barbershop we often pass in the center of town. It's called "Lalon Thakur Saloon" (all barbershops here misspell themselves as saloons) and three barbers from India work constantly with large silver scissors (we mean LARGE) with the speed and accuracy of Edward Scissorshands. Jamtsho warned us about taking our children there, because hair would fly everywhere, but we wanted the local flavor and passed by the ones with posted advertisements for hair products and went to the one where the Indian workers go.
Haircuts cost 30 Nu (75 cents) and take about 3 minutes, but as you can see, with an excellent result. It starts with the BIG scissors and a comb, with a sharp rapid snicking sound, and hair flying everywhere as promised. It even includes the use of a long-handled single-edge razorblade dragged along your neck and around your ears to clean up, and it ends with being powdered with talc in the back of the neck and then whacked smartly with the towel several times, talc clouds rising over the chair.
The boys had haircuts simultaneously in the three chairs by the three different barbers, who talked to each other in Hindi all the while - not a single word of English was exchanged in the entire experience. The room is festooned with mylar garlands in bright colors, posters of hairstyles from the early 1980s with Indian models, and seems busy both day and night with hardly an empty chair, ever.
