For the South Asian Man in the diaspora, the barber shop and its ‘thanda thanda cool cool champee’ or head message in Hindi-Urdu-Bangla is therapy, from the quotidian druggery.
The banal jokes cracked over loud 90’s Kumar Shanu, or the latest Anirudh anthem is a few moments of a lightness of being.
For the semi literate south Asian Barber, from Madras, Rangoon or Sadda Panjab the employment is an opportunity to earn in a foreign currency and remit money. The subaltern here is a micro entrepreneurial artist, making money for the shop owner, while keeping in mind the money he needs to support himself in Malaysia, remit money to build a house in the village and also keeping the resources to renew his next permit.
To keep the spark of joy alive in this strategic calculus is indeed resistance.
Change Thinker 