Last night I had the most vivid dream, uncanny details of which I woke up remembering. Before I would forget those details, I began making notes on my iPad that happened to be next to me. It was only 7 am, too early for me to get out of bed, so once I was done, I went back to sleep. And in a semi-wakeful state my dreams continued to be about being at a barber shop.
Most of last night I dreamt that I was getting a haircut. It was the longest and most eventful haircut of my life even though it wasn’t actually real. I was at this large departmental store which had a section catering to hair services. I think it was the old Bombay Store on MG Road in Bangalore. Two of my sisters were with me - we had a bunch of bags so we must have shopped there for a while, either prior to my dream starting or in a portion that I don’t recollect.
My barber or hairdresser was a light skinned, tall, attractive young woman dressed in a blue printed saree. She had shiny brown hair which she wore in a pony-tail. She looked like she could be a flight attendant for Indian Airlines. She was introduced to me by a man named Rohan although I think that he never actually mentioned her name. For the purposes of this piece I’m going to call her Gita.
The salon was extremely expansive, customers spaced at an uncommonly large distance from each other. It was also meticulously clean, as if the hair being chopped was somehow being magically swept immediately. As I looked at myself in the enormous mirror in front of me, I saw that I had really straight jet-black hair instead of the hair that I actually have.
As Gita began working on giving me a haircut, it seemed like she was cutting each hair on my head individually. She also started talking to me about her life. About how she used to live in London and it was her dream to be a hairdresser in Bangalore. Even in my dream I remember thinking that her ambition sounded really odd. She told me many more things about herself, much of which is fuzzy. Then her phone rang - she excused herself and walked away to take the call. A woman in a short red dress and bright red lipstick came up to me.
“Is this your first time?” she asked sensuously. I remember she had beautiful hair that was so perfect, it almost looked like a wig. She also had a strange accent like she was from some far away place.
I nodded my head in response.
She came up to me real close and whispered, “you should have gone with Rohan. He’s the best.”
Just then Gita returned and the lady in red disappeared. She seemed visibly upset.
“It was my mother,” she said. “I have to go to London next week”
She didn’t volunteer any further information and I didn’t ask. She went back to cutting one hair at a time.
“Would you like to go outside for a while?” she asked all of a sudden.
I agreed like it was the most normal thing to do. She turned my chair around, which apparently had wheels and started pushing me from the back, as if I were seated on a wheelchair. I waved out to my sisters who were waiting for me patiently in the lobby. They waved and went back to chatting with each other.
The street was completely deserted with not a soul or any traffic in sight. On both sides there were these old-style street lights, the kind that I remember from my childhood years in Calcutta. Gita went back to talking about herself, the entire time not having asked a single question about my life. I noticed that the street was on an incline, as if I was in a hilly region.
All of a sudden she let go of my chair and I started going down the incline, fairly rapidly. It wasn’t very steep but I kept gathering pace. I don’t remember if I was afraid. For what seemed like the longest time, I kept going down, completely alone and desolate, until the road came to an end and my chair stopped on its own.
The next thing I knew, I was back in the salon. I had a really nice, new and interesting haircut and my face looked a lot younger. Standing behind me was now Rohan instead of Gita. I paid the lady in the red dress for my haircut and went out to the lobby. My sisters were no longer there. I began looking for them but they were nowhere to be found. At a far corner there was a woman reading a magazine. I began walking towards her. As I got closer, she looked up at me and smiled.
“Are you finally done with your haircut?” she asked.
It was my ex-wife. This time I remember being afraid.
And that’s when I woke up in a cold sweat.
