(8) Foreigner NO???"

(8) FOREIGNER NO???”

By: George Pereira

In Goa everybody knows everybody!!  In Goa everybody knows everything!!

It all happened on one of my early trips to Goa a few years ago.  At seventy, I still maintained a youthful brush of hair which was always dyed black to massage my ego and to delude myself into the pervasive belief that old age was merely a state of the mind.  However, nature sometimes has a way of playing hardball to neutralize one’s vanity.  With the passage of time my hair tended to grow resentful of hair dye and no sooner had I applied this messy stuff to my hair, the roots of my hair would stubbornly peep out telling the world that I was lying.

It was on one of those rare days in Goa that I thought that I would go out in search of a hairdresser, close to our hotel in Betul, South Goa.  In Goa, hair grows as fast as rice does during the monsoons, so you would find a hairdresser at every corner of a “Vado.”   WRONG!

My wife Margaret, an astute observer of both people and shops, informed me that we would have to travel to Asolna (real name of the village) where she had observed a hair-dressing salon promising all kinds of fancy and complicated haircuts and miracle hair restoration.  When we got there, however, our unforeseen adventure was about to begin.  The hairdresser advised Margaret that she would gladly attend to her needs, but that she was not authorized to cut men’s hair.  The rules of the house were that no lady hair-dresser of repute should touch the scalp of a “male” client.  Perhaps it had something to do with the mythology that if a woman touched a male scalp it might lead to an unwanted pregnancy.

With my head hung low, feeling the kind of rejection that one might experience in South Africa in pre-Mandela days, I hoofed it around the corner hoping that my sense of self-worth would be hastily restored.

I walked a step-and-a-jump to Asolna looking for a hairdresser, but there was no saloon in sight.  I thought I would go to a friendly looking guy who was running a brisk trade in selling live chickens. However, many chickens were lined up in death row.

“Hello Sir, is there any place where I could get a haircut?”

“Please wait.  I sell chicken to this man first.”

“Sure” I responded.

After some Konkani exchanges, a customer chose his chicken and handed it back to the man in charge.  I was then witness to a horrendous ritual that would have made the Gestapo salivate.  The chicken-man held the chicken’s legs fast between his knees, stretched the chicken’s neck, and briskly cut its neck with a sharp knife.  He then threw the dying chicken into an empty drum and covered it with a wooden lid.  The chicken was obviously in great distress, struggling and was fighting vigorously for its ebbing life.  After a minute or so, the unrepentant chicken-man lifted the lifeless chicken from the drum and proceeded to pluck its feathers.

As a witness to this early morning shocker, I was not sure whether I should seek his advice on an appropriate hairdresser. Having my hair plucked off my scull was not particularly inviting, I thought.

“Go under tree No?!! Interrupted the chicken-man while he counted his blood money that was handed to him by a customer.

“Under tree?” I repeated.

“You pay him foreigner price No?” he interjected.

“How much is that?” I asked.

“Eighty rupees!” said the chicken-man with an expression of regret that he was in the chicken business, when he could have invested in a pair of scissors and some recycled blades.

Dye in hand, I walked to the hairdresser under the tree.  His first comment was about what I had in my hands. In Goa everybody is nosy enough to investigate what you are carrying, particularly if you are holding on to a bag.  The conversation might go like this:

“You buy vegetables?”

“No.”

“You buy chicken or banana?”

“No.”

“Maybe you buy shoes, No?”

“No.”

“Towels cheap in market, No?”

“Yes.”

As soon as they find that you will not cooperate with them, they view you as being an outsider who is not being very friendly.

Of course, the purpose of the meeting was temporarily in suspension, until I interrupted the trend of thought by asking,

“How much you charge for haircut?”

“Eighty rupees…. you foreigner, No?”

“Suppose I told you that I am from Mumbai?”

“” That’s foreigner, No?”

I could not argue with that, so I settled for eighty rupees.

“Do you know how to dye my hair?” I asked.

The hairdresser, whose name was Peter, looked at me with disdain for I had broken a cardinal rule that most Goans embrace. Goans know everything.

“Give me box,” he said half snatching it from my hands.

In a short time, there were five curious assistants looking at Peter and the box.  What was audible was the repeated comment that the dye was “foreign”.  Faking a professional attitude, he professionally opened the box and examined the contents as though he and others had discovered a new strain of bacteria.  Amidst several “Ah’s and Oh’s as they isolated each of the bacterium from the box. 

Peter then asked me to remove my shirt.  He placed a soiled cloth around my neck, which I thought was guaranteed to give me a serious skin infection, and then proceeded to cut my hair while humming one of the latest Konkani hit parade songs.  When done, he handed me a tiny broken mirror that only reflected and revealed my nose. He then proceeded to apply the dye, while the assistants looked on as though I was about to mutate.

Finally, I was instructed to wait for half an hour to allow the dye to do its trick.  After forty minutes, I prompted Peter to proceed to wash the dye away.

“Sorry Sir,” said Peter, “No water here.  You put on hat and go home and wash.”

I laughed my head off instead of crying my eyes out.

I paid Peter his due and made for the saloon where my wife was hopefully being treated in a more professional manner.

After a whole lot of persuasion, I was given a bucket of cold well water to wash out my hair, with strict instructions to Margaret that I be taken way back in the yard so that the prying neighbours could not watch.

Both my wife and I caught the bus home laughing our heads off until our stomachs hurt!!!!!