Tag: Culture

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Teenagers

I hate the stigma that comes with being a teenager. It seems all people need to know is to see you and know your age before they have decided that you must be an absolute basket-case of a child, rebelling against your parents and hating the world. Straight away they figure that your clothes must be piled in heaps across the floor of your dirty room where you sleep until midday, only to stumble around the house like a zombie, warning people of your approach by your deafening death metal blasting out of the headphones that are beginning to form cobwebs between themselves and your ears.

But, what annoys me more than any of this stereotype profiling is the fact that people are so often correct. We teenagers don’t seem to do much for ourselves by swaggering into a store with the look of a guilty thief, hoody pulled over our head. Is it that we like being the laughing-stock of the world, stuck in an in-between stage when the games of childhood are no longer enjoyable and the pursuits of adults are too much work and seriousness for us to handle. Did we think that we could wear a shirt peppered with dismembered human heads which have rotten through to the bone and not scare people away? Maybe we think that the skulls of dead people must really be attractive to others or that we are being cleverly symbolic by visual representing the way our brains were when we bought the shirt. Or perhaps teenagers are really soft inside. They hate the stares of the outside world, and as a jet fires off its flares to protect itself from missiles, they pierce their faces with small metal trinkets, hoping that when they talk, the moving studs and hoops will distract the listener from the fact that they never actually made it through their tenth grade English class.

At some point in our life, teenagers decide to take off the skulls, turn down the blaring music and get down to working a real job. Perhaps it comes when we see that there’s nothing to prove and no one to prove it to. When we find ourselves all alone, rebelling against a world that got on with their lives years ago. Perhaps it’s when we realize that the biggest thing confining us from reaching our dreams and desires is ourselves.

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The Barber Shop

Going to a barber in Jhik is so much more than simply getting your hair cut. You step into the one room shop, off the road and instantly you are in a different world. Here, time means nothing; there is no clock, no bells and no people to tell you where you need to be. Nothing calls you elsewhere and within minutes you forget about time altogether.
The birds chirp outside and smells of shaving cream and other toiletries float around the room. The barber continues talking with the others in the room, laughing and exchanging jokes. You feel a part of their world, listening to them talk and argue with each other of politics or local happenings. However, at the same time you are detached. The dialogue goes on without you and there is no need to speak or to carry on a conversation. Sitting in the chair as your hair is being cut, you feel at ease, listening to them, without speaking—simply enjoying the scene around you.
Even the physical act of the hair cutting is relaxing and almost therapeutic. The gentle clicking of the scissors and manipulation of the hair almost lulls you to sleep as you sit back, closing your eyes and simply enjoying the experience. The spray of the water sprinkles your head before being rubbed into your hair, dripping down your head. Even the razor tickles as it is edged along the back of your neck and around the ears.
When all is done, the barber takes out a towel and rigorously ruffles your hair as, for a moment you seem lost amidst the towel. He then follows up with a head massage, rubbing deep into the scalp and with hard but controlled blows. Knocking your head around, he finishes with a hard squeeze of the muscles in the back of your neck to leave you with a tingling sensation. This whole experience leaves you almost senseless; relaxed and dazed.
You manage to lift yourself out of the chair and onto the bench where others await their haircuts and beard-trims before being given a steaming cup of tea. For a few minutes you sit there, drinking the tea, hot and sweet which runs down your throat and stimulates your relaxed and contented brain. Then you pay the charge, shake the barber’s hand, and step back out into the street; back into a world of time, movement, work and business. And like one who wakes up from a good dream, you trod along the road back home, nostalgic with a happy smile spread across your face.