Pimp My Barbershop

Put Offs have always been about personal fulfillment, about satisfying that urge. But this time we went a step ahead. This put off was to make us, our friends and one particular stranger extremely happy!

After Sneezing Sunshine and ’cause, both of which happened within Blackbox Headquarters, things were getting too stuffy in there. We needed to get out. Secondly, we have great friends, but we are greedy. We wanted to make more. We needed to make more.

We got together a group of planners, architects and designers and decided to hit them with happy. In a narrow street next to the residential complex of the School of Planning and Architecture lies a small barbershop by the name of Shamim Herbal Beauty Saloon. Shamim, the barber, was our target and to make him flip by flipping his store was the plan!

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Pimp My Barbershop!

After getting his consent, the team gathered more and more data and developed a design idea. It was touching to see them consider the smallest of things that we knew about Shamim, about his family, religious background, business, etc. On Friday, immediately after he closed his shop for the day, we set up shop at Shamim’s.

All we had were a few bananas, one bar of chocolate and an abundance of enthusiasm to fuel us. Energy levels soared as a few strangers on the streets decided to give us a helping hand!

With the deadline of 7:00 AM, the surviving group finished the shop, cleaned up, put on the finishing touches and sat in wait for Shamim bhaiyya to return.

The reaction was not what we expected. Whether it was because we expected him to jump with joy and go “woot woot woot”, we don’t know. But his silence, and constant gaze with that wonderment was something that went to every part of our hearts. It was a moment when we realized that shouts like “amaaazing!” and “wooohooo!” have trivialized our expression of happiness. It took us seconds to read what real contentment was, what happiness was really about. We walked out as a group of extremely sleepy eyed, big grinned and slightly giggly people.

Another Put Off completed. The sleep that was to come, would be the most beautiful in years.

Another Shout to our team!

Aarti Dhingra, Aneesh Nandi, Annie Jacob, Aparna Konat, Bharat Agarwal, Dhruv Kumar, Lokesh Singh, Prateek Shankar, Prithvi Hegde, Protyasha Pandey, Shijo Jose, Shinjita Roy, Shravan Kumar, Vidhya Gopal. And what’s a Put off without a bunch of enlightened folk at the end?!