Catching Up... Haircuts, Cricket and Cock

Sooooo it’s been an eternity since I last blogged. I wish it was because I’d been swept up in some massive drama-filled romance, but no. Things here on the ashram have just kinda settled down after all my angst at the start.

The biggest excitement here of course was the semi-finals and the final of the Cricket World Cup. Whatever the sport, there’s something very captivating about being in the host country when a tournament takes place and if that country is in the final it’s electric! I know nothing about cricket, but I know a bit about politics so in a way the semi-final was far more exciting than the actual final. A few of the Indian fans thought the same way too.

As there’s no tv here, a big old bunch of us decamped up the road to a fabulous bar and restaurant called Malaka Spice. They had the match on the big screen and as it was a grudge match vs Pakistan, it was rammed! There was someone there with a drum, who banged it extra hard every time India did something good, which seemed to be often judging by the noise. I even found myself beginning to understand some of what was taking place on the screen!

Walking back after the match with one of my fellow Osho-ites we were trying to work out exactly what we’d seen, and so we weren’t exactly taking much notice of what was going on around us. On the main road there were gazillions of happy cricket fans in cars and on bikes pomping their horns and cheering but up in the backstreet of our shortcut there was one lone guy on his scooter.

He kept zooming ahead of us and stopping and zooming and so on. The third time we passed him, my pal said ‘oh for God’s sake!’ I looked, and there he was, cock out having a wank! Bless him, I guess he was happy India had won too. Now, tis been a while since I saw anybody’s cock so it took me a while to work out what it was I was looking at, but I have to say it was the tiniest, nastiest specimen I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a cock or two in my time!

As he made eye contact with us, he uttered his killer line “seeeexxxxxx”. Awwww poor sod. I wonder if this technique has ever actually worked on any woman? Do you think that out there somewhere in Pune there’s a female who saw his winkie and heard his cry and thought “sod it, let’s fuck”? No. Me neither. As there were two of us I didn’t find it intimidating at all, but had I been alone it would’ve been pretty freaky, nasty little man.

Having said that, at 50 years of age, it’s kinda flattering to know I can still drive a man to distraction.
just a random flower shot

In other news… regular readers will know that about a month ago I “did a Britney” and cut my own hair. Not quite as short as hers, granted, but still an act of sheer recklessness/madness* (*delete as appropriate). Anyway, I got away with it for a while but the amount of product needed to get it to resemble any kind of style was getting crazy and all those chemicals in your head in this heat isn’t wise. I was being followed by a swarm of flies everywhere I went!

But, what to do? Everyone I spoke to had a horror story about the hairdressers here, and I’ve had the same man cutting my hair since 1985 so it’s a huge deal to go to anyone else. But I couldn’t survive another six weeks with this mop on my head. The icing on the cake was that my regrowth had been lightened by the sun and with the old hair dye on the ends I now had red, blonde, brown, grey and black hair. Not a good look.

So reasoning that it couldn’t be soooooo bad I stocked up on photos of Sharon Stone’s crop and headed to the local shopping mall last Saturday. There’s a salon there called Enrich that looks just like the generic shopping mall hair salons you see all over the UK. They’re usually called Supercuts or something back home. For a Saturday they were quiet which almost made me turn back, but I didn’t. A young man called Santosh did the deed, and I was initially sceptical when he looked at the assorted photos - all from the same event - of Ms Stone and said he could only cut it like two of the three pictures! He didn’t even spot they were all the same!

Anyway I had little to lose, I could always buy some scarves, so I let him do his thing. He spent the entire cut singing Hindi pop songs in my ear and thankfully he had a good voice, the cutting didn’t seem to be affected either so that was a result. All of the salon staff were circled around watching him, I have a feeling that not too many Westerners use this place, but he wasn’t put off by the attention at all. His final flourish was to brandish a straight razor, the kind they use in old Western movies to shave with, and with some fancy moves he flicked it all over my head and huge clumps of hair came out!

Once he’d dried it I was very pleasantly surprised with the results, it’s bloody short but with daily temperatures now sitting at 38C, having little or no hair is a bonus. All the hair dye is out and my grey doesn’t look too shocking, and once I got my hands on it myself, I managed to style it up a bit punky and it looks great. To top it all, I was reading the paper online the other day and there was photo of Rihanna with the same cut. Now if only the rest of me looked like that!

The haircut was a huge asset as I continued my exploration of Ayurvedic treatments this week too. I had a thing called Shirodhara which is billed as a rejuvenation treatment. Every day at 9.30 I went to the clinic and had a head massage, a four-handed full body massage, and then for 30 minutes hot oil was drizzled across my forehead. I can honestly say I have never felt this pampered! It was amazing. After each session, during which I slept every time, I felt a bit ‘druggy’ in a good way, and I certainly feel a bit rejuvenated, not that I particularly look it!

On that note, my time here is flying by now for the first time in my life I have no firm plans for what I will do when I get home at the end of May, my diary is completely empty! It’s both scary and liberating I have to say. Having said that, it’s not strictly true, I did this week email and make appointments for a hair-cut and dye job (time for the blonde to return I think) and some Botox. Well a gal’s gotta get her priorities right, hasn’t she? And I’ve found that having a face that moves and shows expression is actually very overrated!