‘Fear all around’: Covid-19 leaves wellness sector in bad health

Fifteen years ago, I pushed a white salon door in a neighbourhood market to enter a space the size of a small kitchen, and reached a hairdresser after trampling over the feet of four others. Her name was Renila Lepcha, and we began to talk hair, by appointment, to each other in a rocky Hindi accent in a south Delhi locality every two months. Familiarity bred a ritual. “Trust me,” she would say, to which I would reply, “always do!” and she would get her scissors out and make the hair on top of my head look like a nuclear cloud to give it volume. So far, we had accepted this ritual for what it was: an unspoken commitment between a hairdresser and a satisfied client that this would continue, unless one of us changed the neighbourhood.

The pandemic has changed every convention of everyday life. It has specified two metres to be the distance that must separate two human beings in order to be safe. Worldwide, this has hobbled the salon industry. In India, it hit its skilled workforce (including the barber on the street) with the closing down of salons; re-opening them in June still shows a grim picture. According to the Beauty & Wellness Sector Skill Council (B&WSSC), which works under the aegis of the union ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship, the industry employs nearly 70 lakh people, which means that when the salons were forced shut amid the Covid-19 lockdown in March, something like the entire population of Bulgaria saw their earnings either shrink or disappear.

Monica Bahl, CEO, B&WSSC, also says this sector employs an economically vulnerable population – a migrant workforce and is women-dominated. “Our challenges to stay afloat are more than many other in the tertiary sector. It is not product based, it’s service based. A shampoo or a dish can be sold via distributors and a customer can opt for a no-touch-delivery service but ours is a touch-and-feel industry. You can demand and maintain a two-metre distance between two clients in a salon but a hair stylist can’t possibly attend to a client from two metres away.”

Post ‘Unlock 1’, hair salons are officially back but are they ‘on’? The potential of infection between people in an enclosed space and whether salons are equal to the task of maintaining hygiene even with the most stringent of sanitation in the time of an epidemic is keeping clients away.

There are also unanswered questions; trivial though they may seem, but not, when a misstep may mean life or death. Can blow-drying, almost an ‘essential’ service at salons, for instance, lead to an increased flow of virus-carrying particles? Is the PPE gear really being disposed of after each use? Is anyone doing random checks to ascertain this?

There is a Free Online Certification Program on precautionary measures, health, safety and hygiene guidelines uploaded on the B&WSSC website for industry professionals. Of an industry strength of 70 lakh, the total registered for online certification – they allow three tries — since the lockdown is 1,17,657; total pass-outs : 98,170. Passing it is not difficult; I did on first try.

Hygiene priorities, however, seem to be very much an individual salon owner’s call. “Before the lockdown we had an approximate number of 40 visitors per salon each day in Mumbai whereas in Delhi we had approximately 50 visitors. Post lockdown we have seen a decrease in the number of visitors by 50% to 60 %,” says Sumit Israni, managing director of the high-end, pan-India brand, Geetanjali Salons and Studios. After ‘Unlock 1’, around 15 to 30 sanitiser bottles are used in each salon as per the size; pre-lockdown, it used to be 5 to 7. On a much smaller scale, at Hair & Glow, Delhi, Renila says sanitising is “sufficient”. “Earlier, on a good day”, the salon serviced 15 clients a day. After the easing of the lockdown, it gets no more than three.

The question of safety over aesthetics is actually a cul de sac. A year ago would you think it’s possible to watch opera from a car seat? But it’s happening in Europe. Hair is important even for those who are balding, says Mumbai stylist Placid Braganza, who runs a 15-member team hair salon in Mumbai. The Delhi government re-opened the salons in the first week of June; Mumbai’s salons re-opened by June-end.

Placid says his lockdown experience has taught him that he needs to concentrate on his teaching career as a possible Plan B.“A hair cut makes you look groomed. You might be locked up in your home, but due to social media or work from home via video-calls, can you say you are invisible? Looking groomed is key messaging. It says you are on top of your game, even now.” But there is fear all around, he admits, no matter what gear you are wearing.

Elias Canetti, who explores the psychology of crowds in his book, Crowds and Power, says that clothes, in a state of fear, gives insufficient insecurity. It is easy to fear their “tear…imagine skin as smooth, defenceless, naked, the flesh of a victim”. Is social distancing the new ostracism? Can fear make you look at your hair, skin and those you know differently? Can a virus decide the boundary of your being? Re-order who can touch you and who can’t? The future of one of the world’s oldest professions is at stake. The barber-surgeon was considered part of the medical profession in Europe in the Middle Ages; besides haircuts, he gave leech-treatments to soldiers injured in battle.

Australia and Japan deemed haircut an essential service during the pandemic. China lifted its lockdown in March. A South China Morning Post video in March shows hairdressers doing the ‘Long-distance Haircut’ using trimmers and scrubbers attached to long rods to trim and wash hair. Regular customers, the video noted, were keen to try this out.

A video that did well in India was well-known hair stylist Jawed Habib’s DIY lockdown tutorial on Youtube. Sangeeta Rathi, a business strategist with an MNC, gave her son a trim after watching it. Friends and neighbours followed suit. Paper scissors were brought out to give a young child or a partner, haircuts; the more fastidious ordered on shopping sites the best trimmer and scissors that money could buy. Appointments given to local salon boys, who had started doing home visits service by May, were cancelled. Even in June, client number per day at these salons is in single digits.

In April, Delhi-based academic Rama Paul’s sons emerged from the washroom with a “seminary cut” given by mum; in June they checked into the new-era salon where hairdressers “looking like astronauts” in PPE gowns gave them a professional snip. The family also started going to a branded salon instead of their regular one; the logic being they would be more conscious of a bad review, and hygiene standards would be better. Khokon Acharjee, a retired bank employee of Kolkata, called in a barber that his friends were using at home. If a hairdresser was a barber from the common pool, he seemed a safer bet.

Aarti Khurana, who has been doing Insta Lives as a tarot card reader, called home a hairdresser recommended by a friend. She was desperate enough to let in a professional wearing PPE gear “stitched by his mom; he washes it everyday”. On the flip side this also shows that people are testing the limits of everyday courage and choosing to put their lives in the hands of virtual strangers in the face of a still unfathomable disease.

“I don’t want to turn paranoid. That’s not me. Covid is here to stay. If you sanitise multiple times and both wear masks, it should be fine,” says Aarti. She paid R2,500 for hair colour, R1,500 for the haircut. The IANS reports a survey by Redquanta, which says salon visits are among the top three activities that people missed the most during the ongoing pandemic. “He charged me Bandra salon rates but I was filled with gratitude just to have him turn up so well covered. After he left, I immediately had a bath,” says Aarti.

Convenience is the “new non-negotiable” in the service industry, says Ayush Bansal, a Mumbai gym owner. He calls his hairdresser, Nadeem, a friend. “Everyone is looking for end-to-end services sitting at home,” he says. “If you can get groceries, you can get a hairdresser as well.” His change of hairdressers in the past years maps this transition. He started to patronise Nadeem, who works in a salon five minutes from his home in Juhu over Michelle, his first regular hairstylist, as her salon was a 20-minute drive away at Pali Hill. Nadeem could soon become history with Ayush having started to use hairdressers with Urban Clap.

The new rule for every segment of society is that don’t be overdressed, everyone understands you are at home, says actor Meeta Vashisht, who did a virtual press meet for her new film, Your Honour. “I just had to make sure my hair looked good for the camera, how it looks from the back really doesn’t matter. Recently, on Insta I just wore clothes one wears at home and did a spoof. It had 13,000 likes. When I put my hair up and dressed up to spoof a hit song in a movie, it had half the views.”

All this, however, may not bode well for hairdressers. “Fear is impacting every business in the world, including ours,” says Jawed Habib, who runs 900-plus salons in 120 cities of India. “Clients are walking in like inspectors and asking if the shop is safe. If the shop is open, it must be! We want to be safe too. People are just getting essentials done now – a quick hair cut, or the covering of greys, or a repair job and they are out of the salon.” He suggests that the Council instead of “just focusing on rules and norms should also talk of support”. So far, the Andhra Pradesh government is one of the few state governments offering help to the fraternity. In June, it announced that it will soon launch a one-time financial assistance scheme of R10,000/beneficiary for traditional hairdressers, tailors and launderers.The Nagaland government has also offered a one-time R10 K to all returnees, irrespective of industry. Three hundred from the hair salon industry returned home this month.

The industry employs around 70 lakh; women workforce is around 47%. The pandemic has also forced many migrants, especially from the North-east who are a sizeable population in the beauty and wellness industry to return home. According to Madhumita Saikia, president, Assam Aesthetician Association, 2,500 hair industry personnel from Assam have returned home in June; 300 to Nagaland, 60 plus to Manipur, 150 to Mizoram; Sikkim and Meghalaya having blocked re-entry to all migrants.

Renila Lepcha of Darjeeling is staying put in Delhi. She is waiting for her husband, a chef, stranded in Russia, and also for her regular clients. She won’t be meeting any of them soon. “I trust you”, was told to her only once every two months. – Hindustan Times