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Journalism of Courage
IT8217;S an establishment without a name. Nrupal Gondhelkar8217;s customers just watch out for a pink cubbyhole at the end of the pavement opposite the frenetic Currey Road railway station in central Mumbai. His street side parlour takes up half the sidewalk and has just enough space to fit two well-worn barber8217;s chairs and slim shelves with a melange of international and domestic brands8212;L8217;Oreal, Wella, Olivia and Shahnaz.
In the mirror, Lalbaug8212;a lower middle-class area and Ground Zero of Mumbai8217;s defunct textile mills8212;is teeming with life. Gondhelkar8217;s shop, which has no doors, gives its customers a full view and odour of smoke-belching trucks and pregnant waste bins.
It8217;s hard to imagine a more unlikely address for a spot of metrosexuality. But four years after author and journalist Mark Simpson coined the term, the idea of male grooming has gone beyond expensive salons and pretty boys.
According to some industry sources, the men8217;s grooming product market share is estimated to be between Rs 600 crore and Rs 800 crore.
Most of that demand comes from men in middle-income India, who are waking up to the idea that looking good is not for sissies. 8216;8216;I get 15 to 20 clients a day who want to reduce their tan,8217;8217; says Ashraf Shaikh of Pune8217;s Green Hairdressers. 8216;8216;I give them a herbal facial and steam, followed by a scrub. This gives the face a chamak,8217;8217; he says, servicing a 50-year-old businessman who8217;s in for his weekly bleach and facial.
Gondhelkar8217;s kerbside parlour was established by his grandfather 35 years ago. Today the man with highlighted spikes a better colour job than MS Dhoni8217;s old Goldilocks look offers his male clients a series of treatments, from chemical straightening, perming and highlights to bleaching, fruit facials and makeovers. 8216;8216;All my customers want to look younger. I do about 25 straightening treatments a month,8217;8217; says the beautician.
One of those 25 is for Shishwar Pawar. About a year ago, Gondhelkar suggested the 23-year-old student go straight. So every three months Pawar gets in the hot seat, a pink satin cloth around his shoulders and Wellastrate relaxing his once-wavy hair, giving him, as he likes to think, an uncanny likeness to Kunal Khemu in Kalyug. The look has gone down so well with Pawar that he says, 8216;8216;Jo mere seth bolenge, woh hum karenge.8217;8217; I8217;ll do whatever he suggests.
In fact, for every David Beckham wannabe who gets a Rs 1,800 Clarins Made to Measure men8217;s facial, there are three sitting in a neighbourhood parlour, waiting to be smothered in Olivia bleach and exfoliated with a Shahnaz Gold facial.
Inside Gangadhar Men8217;s Corner, Pune, Vilas Athawale is temporarily indisposed. His hairy hands and feet are soaking in soapy tubs, and through a thick layer of orange face gunk, the 27-year-old teacher says, 8216;8216;With so much pollution in the city, it becomes important for me to take care of my own body, so I get a fruit facial every month.8217;8217; And Athawale has no qualms about revealing that he uses his sister8217;s Fair and Lovely cream and sandalwood talcum powder, 8216;8216;to look appealing even when teaching students8217;8217;.
It8217;s precisely this cross-gender product usage that led herbal beauty begums Shahnaz Husain and Vandana Luthra of VLCC to include men8217;s products in their skincare lines.
Husain actually got on the bandwagon back in 1993, when a swagger and a stubble were the watermarks of a true hunk. Husain8217;s Shamen, a sandalwood-enriched aftershave cream, which also doubles as a moisturiser, is still one of her most popular male products.
Thirteen years after her Man Power Range of cleansers, scrubs, toners and moisturisers, Husain plans to initiate men into that hallowed female space of fairness creams. 8216;8216;We are going to bring out Fair Man, as well as anti-ageing and anti-marks creams for men too,8217;8217; Husain says.
Her future clients are sitting in places like Pune8217;s Dost Gents Hairdressers at Maal Dhakka Chowk. Its chief beauty expert Sarfraz Shaikh feels a facial is most important for a man to look good. He has three tips for his customers: 8216;8216;Use a good shower gel, sun protection cream and get a face massage done at least once a month.8217;8217; It8217;s a long way from the days when a bottle of Old Spice was the A and Z of the male beauty regimen.
When Luthra started a chain of beauty and slimming centres in 1988, only 20 per cent of her clients were men. 8216;8216;Today VLCC treats an equal amount of men and women in our 100 centres across India,8217;8217; says Luthra. According to the company8217;s numbers, the men8217;s grooming products market is growing by 200 per cent annually.
Over the years, male clients often complained that VLCC8217;s products were too women-oriented. So earlier this month, VLCC launched Fuel, a line of home-use herbal products for the other half. The Fuel range includes an aftershave balm, a hair cleanser with antioxidants, and hair gels for strengthening and styling. The items are competitively priced between Rs 75 and
Rs 145 because Luthra believes that 8216;8216;when one creates a product for the masses, awareness always comes faster.8217;8217;
But for this new breed of well-groomed men, the price tag is of no real consequence. Pankaj Parab8217;s been ignoring the numbers for two years now. The 25-year-old clearing agent who works in the Mumbai docks gets a weekly bleach and facial and continues the pampering at home. 8216;8216;I use a L8217;Oreal lotion to get rid of dark spots and cleanse my face with a L8217;Oreal cleansing milk every night,8217;8217; he says. His monthly skincare budget totals Rs 2,000, and he gets his wife to daub on some lotion every night as well.
8216;8216;This generation is more willing to change and spend on it,8217;8217; says Manoj Bagatharia, the proprietor of Asha Hair Care, Ahmedabad, whose most popular treatment is the hour-long facial, complete with an ozone spray. His new services are a graduation from the simple cut-and-shave the salon offered 25 years ago, when it first opened its doors. Asha has grown into one of the Gujarati capital8217;s most sought-after spots for male grooming.
It8217;s an evolution our roadside expert Gondhlekar is hoping to emulate at his 10ft x 5ft enterprise. He8217;s been training an assistant for the past six months and hopes to get a few months under the tutelage of Delhi-based hairstylist Javed Habib. 8216;8216;I don8217;t have the means for that yet, but I8217;ve heard they offer scholarships,8217;8217; he says. He8217;d definitely have the recommendation of most of central Mumbai.
With inputs from Elsa S Mathews/Ahmedabad and Rashmi Kumar/Pune
