Salon of Terror!

As many of you know, I got my hair cut very, very short before I came to India. I've spent the last 8 months growing out that bad decision, which had resulted in a long and mangy mullet-like situation. Clearly, it was time to visit the hairdresser.

Now, I considered going to my usual place when I was back in NYC 3 weeks ago but ultimately decided against it because (a) they were the ones who gave me the not-so-great haircut to begin with and (b) a cut at my place in NYC is 10 times as expensive as in India. (Nope, that is not an exaggeration. Literally, 10 times as expensive). So, with no small amount of trepidation--India is, after all, a country filled with women with lovely long predominately straight hair--I went last Saturday to the salon.

Now, I don't want you all to think I went in blindly. Quite the contrary, I did my research both in terms of crowd-sourcing friends and internet reviews. Ultimately I decided to go to the Martina Wu Salon on the recommendation of an Iranian friend here with curly hair. "Go see Martina," she told me "My curly hair was very happy."

So, to Martina I went. But, things took an immediate wrong turn when I walked through the door and without any ado they ushered me to the hair washing station. NO, WRONG!!! Curly hair is not meant to be washed wet--any good salon knows that curly hair should be cut dry in order to see how the curls will fall. At the very least the stylist actually cutting your hair should see what you look like with dry hair so she can get a sense of how tight the curls are, etc. This is VERY important because otherwise a stylist might cut wet curly hair thinking it's like straight hair--i.e., what you see is what you get--without realizing that about half of that length is going to be sucked up by the ringlet.

Things were not off to an auspicious start. And, to make matters worse the fellow washing my hair did two further unforgiveable things.  First, he dried my hair by vigorously rubbing it with a towel, NO WRONG AGAIN--HAVE YOU NEVER HEARD OF UNCONTROLLABLE FRIZZ YOU TOWEL-DRYING MANIAC!!! Then, and I shudder to tell you all this, he took out a comb and combed it. Combing, my beautiful curly hair--which hasn't seen the like of nary a comb or a brush for about 20 years (since I realized the cotton-ball head is not a good look for anyone)--I could have cried!

With the integrity of my curly hair having been violated, I was left, wet and somewhat overheated (because there was no AC on the salon) in the chair of execution, er, the stylist's chair. Adding insult to injury, some fool decided it would be a good idea to keep a Maroon 5 song on repeat.

Then Ms. Martina Wu made her appearance.

She picked up scissors and made a pass at my hair. "NONONONONO!" says I "Let me tell you what I want." And so I explain that my hair is curly, and that I'm not fond of the mullet situation going on, and than I showed her a picture of my with a haircut I liked from about 3 years ago.

Says Martina Wu, "It can't be done."

Now, to be fair, I think Ms. Wu was probably correct--my hair is still too short to obtain the length and fullness of the hair in the picture. But still, I had to believe things weren't quite so dire. So, Martina and I spoke for the next 5 minutes about what could be done, and then she gave me what may have been the fastest haircut of my life. And then she let some of her crazy minions loose on my hair with a blow dryer before sending me out the door.

Ok, now to be fair, I actually think that--disastrous blow drying styling aside (not that that matter much because after the tragic combing event there was little that could be done to preserve the sanctity of the curl) the cut is not that bad. It's even...cute. (Well, you can judge for yourself from the photo above.) But the whole experience was so traumatic, I think it may have turned my hair gray.