Thanks to love, a new look, sans dreadlocks and beard

Once in a while it’s okay, perhaps beneficial, to fall for a lover’s trap. Larcenous and lacerating at its strongest, love almost always hides a treacherous trick up its sleeve, a dark scheme of deception that makes us tweak our closely held beliefs hoping no one will notice. But it takes one moment to change character. Mine changed on Sunday last when my wife took me to a beauty saloon.

The threats had been coming for weeks. My hair had too many dreadlocks, my beard had grown way too bristly, my face produced more oil than West Asia and my feet frankly disgusted her. Nothing wrong with any of them if you ask me but then I am not the one taking the decisions. Prior to Sunday she would inspect my hair everyday like a gardener, never revealing her plan, but making soft sounds with her small mouth, sounds like ‘hmmm’ ‘aha’ ufff’. My beard she dared not come close to, lest its bushy bristles prick her, but that never stopped her from commenting or taking notes.

I must admit I wasn’t as cynical as I sound, for when I entered the place I recall having a big smile on my face. In fact when my wife suggested it, I openly supported the idea and encouraged her to take an appointment at her neighbourhood saloon as soon as possible. All around me were men and women losing parts of themselves they were no longer comfortable with. The first impression I had of the saloon with its shinning mirrors, bright lights and shelves stacked with products was of a place that was trying very hard to shoo death out of its system. I felt like a trade union leader in a boardroom full of bankers.

A modern beauty saloon gives off the vibe of a modern hospital just the way a modern hospital feels more and more like a mall. There is something medicinal to the entire exercise even though we all know we’re practically dealing with dead skin all the time. Like a doctor the hair specialist inspected my dreadlocks, asked me a few lifestyle questions the answers to which did not make him happy, and then began telling me what my options were. For a minute I wondered if it were my hair or my heart we were talking about. I nodded at the most obvious suggestions and discovered that I had signed up for the most expensive hair treatment.

I tried to protest when it came to my face where the only problem I see is my nose — which no beauty saloon is equipped to deal with — but my pleas were shot down on the pretext that my face had transformed into an oil field a while back with the maximum reserves concentrated in and around the region once known as my nose.

Midway through the face massage, the precursor to the application of the face mask, I felt my strongest held beliefs crumbling under the gentle pressure applied by the beautician, a young man in late 20s. Perhaps, this is what it means to get corrupted, I thought. The idea lingered in my mind all through the face treatment which after the massage involved a face scrub, steam treatment followed by a face pack followed by the last step: a cold towel. I could feel what the massage was doing to my mind and I was loving it and not loving it in the same moment in the sense that I loved the massage but did not love the fact that I loved the massage.

A pedicure will completely convert me I imagined and decided to opt out. Surprisingly, my wife did not protest at all. My face looked cleaner, my hair neater. Her battle more won than lost, she let me walk out with some dignity on my own sweaty, grimy, unmindful working class feet. Love had done its trick and there was no need to push the envelope.