Blade in hand, barbers help survivors

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Since their shops are now rubble, intrepid barbers have propped up chairs by the roadside. In fact, the only shop open in the main market on the airport road apart from the phone booths belongs to a barber.

In Sukhpar, seven kms away from Bhuj town on the road leading to Nakhatrana, people are queuing up for mundan. Khalifa, in fact, has set up his makeshift shop just outside his one-time home, now a pile of concrete debris. “My family too lives under the open sky now. I too lost everything that Friday,” he says as he massages the ears of five-year-old Rupesh Naran. “This young boy lost his uncle’s wife, Radha,” he says. Rupesh is accompanied by his father Naran Kanji, a farmer, who’s awaiting his turn.

Gani Fakir Mohammad, 20, adds. “I have already shaved the heads of more than 150 people in the past three days, and now, my hands are working like a machine.”

Another group of four barbers have set up shop beneath a polythene tent. “We are not asking for anything. Anybody who has any rokhda (money) pays. It’s not we who demand,” says Praveen Hareji. There’s a shortage of shaving blades in town, he complains. “There are so many people still left for mundan that we need boxes of blades. After all, the toll is not in hundreds but in thousands.” he points out. “If the government could arrange for shaving blades and shaving cream with the relief, we won’t charge anything at all.”

Harije and his brothers Chandulal and Himmat confirm that they haven’t had a breather over the past three days. “In the first week after the quake, there was so much chaos that nobody thought of mundan. Now as life comes back to normalcy, people have started remembering this religious responsibility.”

Kesra Shivaji is getting his head tonsured near Mankuwa village. He had lost his wife Valbai Kesra when their house was razed. “I couldn’t find her till they dug her body out,” he said. “I have come for a mundan so that her soul rests in peace. What else can I do?”