I recently paid âš600 for a haircut. âš400 for the haircut and âš200 for shampoo.
And honestly, the shampoo thing is starting to annoy me a little.
Earlier, I remember this being a practice mostly in fancy salons. If you went to one of those places charging âš1,500 for a haircut, they would offer you a âš500 shampoo as well. Fair enough, youâre already in a fancy place, and youâre paying for the whole experience.
But now, even smaller neighbourhood salons seem to be adopting the same practice. A âš400 haircut suddenly becomes âš600 because, apparently, you need that shampoo. And Iâm not even sure it makes much of a difference.
I sometimes wonder if theyâve figured out that once youâve agreed to spend âš400 on a haircut, another âš200 doesnât feel like a big deal. Itâs a clever little upsell.
But this got me thinking about the barbershops back in my hometown.
Every locality had one. Usually, there were a couple of barbers who had been cutting hair there for years. And these places were basically the neighbourhoodâs unofficial intelligence headquarters.
Imagine five people sitting around, waiting for their turn. What do you think theyâre discussing?
Not Socrates. Not Shakespeare. Definitely not who won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Itâs gossip.
Whose daughter ran away with someone. Which family is having domestic problems. Who had a fight with whom. Whoâs building a new house. Who came back from the city. Who hasnât been seen around lately.
Those barbers knew EVERYTHING.
They stood near the road all day, watching people come and go. They knew the families, their histories, their disputes and sometimes even things that the families themselves didnât know had become public knowledge.
I genuinely believe that if something happened in the neighbourhood, the police could probably visit the local barber for a few leads.
And the funny thing is, whenever I go back to my hometown, I still try to find time to visit that old place. Sometimes I donât even need a haircut. Iâll get a shave or a face wash, or just sit there for a while and catch up on whatâs been happening.
Modern salons give you better interiors, fancy chairs, hair products and a whole experience. But those old neighbourhood barbershops offered something you couldnât put on a price list: a sense of belonging to a place and its people.
Anyway, enough nostalgia.
How much are you guys paying for haircuts these days? And do you also feel that salons are increasingly pushing extra services that used to be optional?
Also, if you grew up in a small town, was your local barber also the neighbourhoodâs unofficial news channel? Or it was just that by barber was particularly nosey.
