Roadside Shave

I had an interesting little experience in Old Delhi the other day. Tamir (the Israeli backpacker I am currently rooming with) and I were exploring the streets, or more accurately alleys, of Old Delhi, getting as far from the tourist spots as possible. He had mentioned he wanted to shave his beard, so when I saw the roadside shaver, I suggested he get it done their. He negotiated a price for the shave, and got in the chair. He wanted me to take pictures, so I was taking some photos with his huge SLR camera, when we started to draw a lot of attention. Seeing a white guy getting a shave in this part of town seemed to interest a lot of people, as did the other white guy with the huge camera taking pictures. 10 men and 5 boys surrounded us, talking in Hindi and laughing.



The kids were all trying to jump in to the photos and started doing pretty funny poses so I would take photos of them. Then, right when I thought things could not get any stranger, one of the young men felt my bicep and gave me the ‘not bad’ face. I then felt his, and gave the ‘that is very small. just kidding!’ face. Then a few other guys felt my bicep and each others. On the one guys arm there was an ill-drawn, unprofessional tattoo. I pointed at it and gave the “very cool” face. They all then got excited and motioned that I should get a tattoo, and showed me a place, just 2 stalls away, where I could a tattoo.

I was actually considering getting a small tattoo. I could not think of a more interesting place to get a tattoo then a dilapidated alley in old Delhi, where not a person spoke English. In the end, I chose not to. Officially, I did not get a tattoo because of the high AIDS rate in India, and because this place was very, very far from sterile and had quite a bit of blood on the drill thing. Unofficially, I didn’t want to look bad in front of my new friends by passing out at the sight of my own blood.

We ended up getting some street food and having lunch with these guys. They refused to let Tamir pay for the shave and even offered to give me one for free.