I don’t even know if there’s something called a parlour crawl but I can absolutely take credit for having done it and with panache. To be able to appreciate my experience, you really have to be someone who has off-days or rather off-your-head days and just does what you feel like when you don’t have a plan or don’t like to have one!
I often wonder where it is that I got this zest for looking up the Internet for things that I might need someday someplace sometime! It’s labelled trivia for people with better things to do but to me it’s all-important general knowledge. Trust me, for a lady, any age, that frequents parlours, this can be crucial armour to defend yourself from so-called beauticians who don’t themselves know they are out there to get you.
I had planned to straighten my hair. Decision made at 8.30 a.m. Parlour to be determined. I should mention that my risk-taking mentality is a tad high! I don’t always believe in being a loyal client to one parlour since I think I’d never know how it fares against the rest in the market. That explains it! Or, it’s probably also because I think I know how to ‘fix’ damages, if I recognize them that is!
I was there for the appointment that I had just made an hour before - in the premises of a relatively new parlour with a decent brand name. My basic questions were answered and twenty minutes later I was swivelling in a chair with blow dried hair, looking in the mirror imagining my expected result of the tedious process. Two of the gorgeous tubes sat there in front of me as the hair stylist stepped aside to wash her hands. I couldn’t resist picking up a tube to read the information on it. L’Oreal it was, just as I had wanted. Upto eight months of straight hair - only sans clamps, pony tails and braids - not to miss the fine print, explained the stylist as she mixed the stinky magic cream in a bowl. I blinked hard and stared at the tube again. It had expired two months before. I read again to be sure, in better light. I had read right. I called the lady and told her what I saw. ‘No chance!’ she said, ‘I had a client even last week!’. I cringed in my chair.
The cream had to be used within two years of the date of import. I explained to her passing through every relevant information on the label. She had no expression. Either she was too shocked to react or she was skilled at handling clients such as me in situations such as this.
She left the room to speak to the sales head. Ten minutes inched by and I was fuming ; more with every passing minute. The chain isn’t a cheap one nor are their charges. How could they be so careless? Did they not know it before or did they not mind using it as the expiry was fairly recent? Another stylist walked past and I imagined she looked at me like I was a giant headache first thing in the morning set out to ruin their possibly nice day.
I swung the door open and peeped out of the room. The stylist looked at me like I was holding her under the guillotine. ‘A minute ma’m! We’re looking for new stock’, she said feebly. I walked back in and my heart went out to all those who were victims of that expired batch of tubes. Nothing may happen at all, it’s still ‘may’ right? You don’t want to pay through your nose in a branded parlour for a branded gamut of products to buy a branded allergy.
The stylist literally dragged herself in to let me know that they didn’t have newer stock. I offered to pay for the blow drying but they offered it to me for the fiasco.
Blow dried hair in the blazing sun. I had imagined straight soft hair in an air-conditioned room. A bad day it was but I was determined it was not going to be a bad hair day. Quick, I said to myself recollecting what other parlours were on the 100 feet road I was standing on at noon.
Another hoarding caught my eye. Ditto. Branded chain of parlours, and new in town. I walked a flight of stairs in pursuit of perfect hair. A lady welcomed me and asked what service I was in need of. An hour of cooling under a heavy duty Bluestar airconditioner was more like it. I rattled off and she quickly summoned her colleague to take my rapid-fire. We were done discussing the differences between hair straightening and rebonding and I had established she didn’t think they were different. Okay. I was willing to let it go.
‘What cream do you use?’ I asked. The lady who left us earlier reappeared like a genie, like I was asking personal questions. She replied and I clarified that I wanted the name of the cream and not the brand name.
‘We can’t tell you that, ma’m’. An awkward pause.
‘Would you let a pharmacist give you a drug from a known company without knowing what it treated?’, I blurted. ‘It’s my head and I ought to know what goes on it so I can tell my dermatologist what I used if I need to see one in the first place, god forbid!’
I knew I was positively a pain in wherever they didn’t want one. Two other ladies down the same hundred feet road I was standing again on quarter past noon would undoubtedly share their sentiments.
Where next? I now dared to try checking with a smaller parlour whose beautician had done my wedding makeup a decade ago. Only, I had gathered so much information in this last decade, would she or her services be any different? I thought, as I felt my goal for the day move further away.
It looked the same from outside. I knocked and let myself in. There she was, just as she looked a decade ago. I’m not too sure why I was surprised though. By now, I had lost all the energy to question.
I asked her the same set of questions, weakly. Her every answer made me shake off the fatigue and hopelessness. Clearly, frankly and patiently, she took every question of mine and an hour later, again, I was swivelling in a chair with freshly blow dried hair. (Turns out, the branded chain down the road hadn’t washed my hair well and I was so glad I accepted their offer of a free faulty job)
This experience was totally new to me again. Not in the last decade had I seen a stylist more dedicated, polite, focussed, frank and last but not the least, modest despite the experience she had gained. I loved her motto of hearing her clients as opposed to the annoying style of ‘Oh! leave it to me! I know how to give you a make over’ -style that many inexperienced, badly trained arrogant stylists have. It has nothing to do with not being loyal to a parlour - I had this experience even in the parlours I frequented before and had clearly established that I was a pain in the neck.
Scrapy pedicures that gave me bruised feet craving for my earlier unkempt but happy ones, two eyebrows inches apart with six differences you could spot however hard I try to arch them to make them look passable, a scratch on a face that tells everyone where I went visiting - My turn to say - been there had it all!
As a client, I don’t have the skills though I know the procedures I am put through. Lack of skill doesn’t mean I lose the right to determine what goes on my face and what torture my feet need to go through. They are mine for god’s sake and who knows them better than I do! A painful pedicure isn’t meant to be that way because of exfoliation, lady! It simply means you’re so pathetic that you’re getting rid of more skin than you should be! I want rosy not bloody feet! I pay what you want so I can ask for what I want. Don’t make me think it’s easier to make it to Extreme Makeover than get done only what I want from you!
Just a shout to all you women out there - you know what’s best for you. Shy not from checking what’s important, you might end up surprising and saving yourselves from these stylists - again, like I said, some of whom may not even know they are out there to get you!
I now have hair I set out to get! That that I had to beg my new-found stylist to let me go after ten long hours is a different story altogether. What matters is I like what she did and she does it well. It's not about the big names always - sometimes, some small owner-run parlours, though tiny in front of these giants do a far superior job than the certified beauticians who train a truck-load of assistants, frame their certificate for display and go away on a holiday, taking the much needed skills with them.
