A contended smile lit up the face of Alex Thomas as he looked at his reflection on the big rectangular mirror set across the chair in the salon.
“I feel comfortable after getting rid of the overgrown hair,” said Mr. Thomas, who was wrapped in a disposable cape at a popular hairstyling centre on the first day of its reopening on Wednesday since the COVID-19 lockdown. “It was in March that I had a haircut last,” said Mr. Mathew, managing director of a snacks manufacturing company in Kochi, as his hairdresser, wearing a face mask, looked on.
Phone bookings
While most of the upmarket salons started taking telephonic bookings from their customers by providing a spacing of 15 minutes between one another, customers walked into the low-end barber shops sans prior appointments.
“Should I bring a towel to wrap myself for a haircut,” asked a customer over telephone while seeking an appointment.
“We provide disposable capes for the customers. They can also bring their own towels. It’s their choice,” said B. Satheeshkumar, who owns the salon. The towel warmer installed inside the salon can heat up and dry 15 pieces in minutes and cloth towels can be disinfected and dried quickly, he said.
Mr. Satheeshkumar has stocked enough number of face masks for the customers. It felt stuffy inside the salon as the air-conditioner was switched off. Hand sanitisers were there for the customers. All four hairdressers were seen sporting face masks.
Slow pace
Till forenoon, appointments were given to 12 customers, a reflection of the slow pace at which the business was picking up after 50 days.
At a local salon in the city, things were quite different. Though Muhammad Shameer, a Hindi-speaking hairstylist, applied hair gel on his customer after wearing a surgical glove, the face mask was prominently missing. However, another hairdresser, wearing a mask, was busy talking over the telephone to the malik, who rang up to ask about the business. There were four men inside the one-room shop as Mr. Shameer applied the hair gel on the spiked hair of a young customer.
It was business as usual and the advisories issued by health experts and the government for such shops went for a toss.