After our splendid lunch at the Indiana Multicuisine Restaurant, we walked back to our jalopies, feeling quite sated and a bit shaggy around the ears. In order to rectify the latter, we struck up a conversation with a cab driver who called himself Mr. Bom. Mr. Bom wore an immaculate white uniform and spoke very good English. When he asked us if we would by any chance be needing his services, we were unsure, but we asked for his number. “No mobile” he said, “I had once a cell phone, but I was drinking too much whiskey one night and smashed it.” “Like, in a rage?” I pantomimed, “Oh, yes, too much whiskey very risky” he replied.

With that sage wisdom under our belts, we inquired as to the location of a fine hair cutting establishment in a not to distant place. He instantly gave us directions to the very shop where he himself got his fine looking hairs cut. “30 rupees for a cut, 10 for a shave. Tell him Mr. Bom has sent you. The man’s name is Kalwa.” Great. We took off.

When we arrived, we called forth Mr. Kalwa and one of the two men inside the little shop perked up. Do you know Mr. Bom the driver? Heads nodded. So in we went and down I sat. Soon a little crowd had formed outside the restaurant, consisting of locals who wondered why these two white fellows in panama hats where getting their hair cut at the local dive barber. It was after a sheet had already been elaborately wrapped around my body and tied at the neck that Scott turned to me from his barber seat and said, “did you ask the price?”

“100 rupees.” I tried to communicate once again Mr. Bom and the good price, but now, it seemed, the two hair cutters knew no Mr. Bom and were very confused. We decided that $2.20 for a haircut and $0.83 for a shave was only mild highway robbery. Lay on McDuff.

The crowd of locals grew larger as the haircuts proceeded to expertly administered straight razor shaves. We parted the crowd and left the haircutter , remounting the rusted corpses that were our bikes and rode off into the Agra heat, though it was not quite as bad, with freshly sculpted UP hairdos, and baby bottom faces, burning with aftershave from a bottle advertising the “ax effect” (no charge).

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