Chennai:

“School mate Yasodha is my only friend. Nobody ever wants to be friends with me because I am doing a man’s job running this hair-cutting saloon.

Even my close relatives do not talk to me because I am forced to touch men while cutting their hair or shaving. But I don’t care”.

That’s Thangavel Devi, 30, who has been waging a battle of sexes for the last five years, fighting for space in what has been all along considered a male preserve.

There are any number of women hairdressers but most of them work in urban and semi-urban areas and they attend to only women customers.

Devi, who has done a degree in commerce but could not get a decent job, set up her own saloon at Palladam (Tirupur district), taking after her family trade.

Her father Thangavel is sick and has incurred big debts, so Devi slogs with scissors and blades on her male customers.

She also attends to a tougher facet of her traditional trade as ‘kudimagan’—attending to calls from bereaved families to clean up the dead body for preparing it for the last rites.

She gets Rs 1,500 per body as her fee and does not bother about the raised eyebrows around.

“I earn about Rs 250 averaging two-three cuttings and five-six shavings a day, a little more on Sundays. I also work at a nearby finance company as a bill clerk for a monthly salary of Rs 5,000.

I don’t have holidays because I need every rupee that comes my way to pay up the loan of a little over Rs 1 lakh taken by my father for his medical treatment”, said Devi, throwing light on her hard life in taking care of the family.

“I have two main goals in life — clearing our loans and fulfilling the dream of my brother, now in ninth class, to become a computer engineer”.

It is not just the physical hard labour that Devi must endure; there is also much mental trauma as almost the entire society around her boycotts her because of her odd career.

“Particularly, the women hate me because of my bold venture, but I need the money to save my family from starvation”, said Devi.  When asked about her marriage plans, she shot back: “That will have to wait. Besides, it will be tough finding a man who will accept me the way I am”.

source: http://www.deccanchronicle.com / Deccan Chronicle / Home> News> Current Affairs / by S. Thirunavukarasu / August 19th, 2013