My New Haircut

Americans spend a lot on haircuts - some spend hundreds. In India, a haircut will cost you a fraction of what it does in the States. To be exact, my haircut today was $1.30 - and that includes a healthy, yet unnecessary, tip. It's not that I'm overly awed by the magnitude of the difference in price, but rather I feel like the price of a haircut is a good barometer to show the cost of unskilled labor in India relative to that in the U.S.

ISB has a barber that comes to campus a few days a week to work in the "Gentlemen's Beauty Parlour." This was my first experience in a beauty parlour (or parlor, for that matter). It wasn't anything more than a typical barbershop in the U.S. and, to be frank, I wasn't expecting much in terms of quality. I was pretty amazed. Maybe it's because my expectations were so low, but I thought the barber did a really nice job. It was probably better than the last several haircuts I got at home. And all for about one-fifteenth of the normal price I pay.

As you can tell, I'm starting to run out of good material. Hopefully that will change after this weekend, when Woodson and I travel to Udaipur and Jaipur. This will be my last visit to the northern part of India on this trip.