Barbers are creative people: SRK

When Shah Rukh Khan wants his hair cut, trimmed, styled, dyed, streaked or whatever, he does not go to a barber’s shop, hair-dresser’s salon or beauty parlour... he has the stylist come home!



And why not — he’s the Bollywood Badshah, after all. In this case it is Dilshad Pastakia, hair-stylist to celebrities, and God’s gift to Bollywood. At Mannat, in his dressing room on the third floor, Dishad cuts and styles SRK’s hair.

She’s being doing this for years. “Ever since Mohabbatein and Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani,” she revealed. Gauri Khan was her client. And one day Gauri brought Shah Rukh into Dilshad’s salon at Bandra. “I was damn nervous and dropped the scissors thrice,” said Dilshad. SRK was himself, and went, “Cut like this, cut like that.” Gauri interrupted and told Dilshad, “Don’t listen to him, do what you want.”

The hair-stylist and the actor have been friends ever since. Now she attends to him at home. On the eve of his new release Billu (the Salon & Beauty Parlours Association of Maharashtra got the Barber snipped from the title on the grounds that the word was casteist), BT sneaked into Mannat where Dilshad was working on King Khan’s hair. The conversation went like this...

SRK: I don’t understand how the word barber is casteist... but I understand the emotions of the association. Hair dressers and stylists, they are creative people...
Dilshad: Yes, we create hairstyles for you...

SRK: But the film is not about the barber’s profession, the profession is incidental, Billu is about love and friendship, it’s about environment, so much fun... it’s the least controversial film.
Dilshad: I have no problem being called a barber. We’re cutting hair, that’s what the profession is about. If you call a barber a hair-stylist, you’re just changing the term, not giving him a different profession.

SRK: The associations issue is that the Hindi word nai, when translated into English, becomes barber. And nai is a caste. Which makes barber a caste. But then so is hair-dresser!
Dilshad: Hajam would have been closer... I’ve been called a hajam for years. Actually, the profession ought to be happy to be acknowledged in a Shah Rukh Khan film...

SRK: Aren’t barbers only for men? And stylists for women?
Dilshad: Barbering is a male technique in which the barber works with clippers and employs the scissors over comb. All over England, you have barber shops... there is dignity in labour there.

SRK: But people do use words to demean professions. It’s like calling Manish Malhotra a tailor.
Dilshad: That mindset should be curtailed.
SRK: Maybe after the film, it would have been... because Billu (Barber) has such a simple message. Whichever world you belong to, as long as you’re true to your emotions and your goodness, you’re a better person already. Your profession does not make you a special person. Your ordinariness is special.
Dilshad: It’s a fab profession, and people are proud to be barbers.

SRK: Are you a real barber?
Dilshad: I am a real barber!
SRK: ... Unless you’ve been lying to me for 15 years and are really a choreographer and cutting my hair!