Ode to hajamat stall

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Hand mirror nailed to the pavement wall. Chair turned away from the street, facing the small mirror.

Such is the introverted world of a hajamat stall—the shaving establishment on the city pave. Improvised from most basic elements, the barber sets it up every morning with care and attention. He dismantles it at the day’s end, erasing the stall so completely from the face of earth, that, on gazing at the vacant space, you wouldn’t believe it existed.

This institution is sighted across Delhi. Citizen Ishtiaq’s shaving establishment is standing out these days for being among the capital’s most picturesque. The stall is currently glowing in pink, having been raided by flamboyant bougainvillea bushes. The pink flowers are leaning out from behind the pavement wall, here on a sleepy side-lane, beside central Delhi’s Chelmsford Road.

This humid afternoon, the shaving counter is crowded with the usual tools of the trade. Scissors, razors, combs and folded towels are arranged along a straight row, littered over with pink petals. A cat is sitting beside the mirror, couchant on the counter.

The stall’s baroque setting has been noted in the past. But its exceptional beauty is not to be taken for granted. The bougainvilleas here had yielded no flowers for three years in a row. Last year this month the blossoming was impressive though. But then the stall was nowhere to be seen. Indeed, the shaving establishment too likes to play hide-and-seek with the world, and more frequently at that than its unpredictable flowers. One week, the stall is here. Next week, it isn’t here. Owner Ishtiaq explains that he often leaves the city for nearby Bulandshahr. “I work hard for 8-10 days, earn some cash, after which I go to the village and hand it over to my family. I come back after some days of rest, and reopen the stall.”

Ishtiaq’s stall is in fact a five-minute walk from New Delhi railway station. When intensely homesick, he winds down the stall, strolls over to the station, catches the “Hapur shuttle,” reuniting in a couple of hours with wife and nine children.

The barber’s frequent vanishing act might frustrate a customer needing an urgent hajamat, but the friendly regulars take it in their stride, he says. The stall anyway has been functioning since 1980. For a street business to stay on the same spot for so long, when so much else in the city has changed, is a feat.

In Delhi, Ishtiaq has no house. He sleeps at night on his portion of the pave. Acceding to a request, he turns the stall’s chair towards the lane, and settles into it for a portrait. Motionless until now, the cat stirs, and runs away.