Lahore to Lucknow...

The street is one of the busiest in Lucknow, where lunch hour and evening traffic jams are a given. You often notice the sign board, “AN John Hairdressers” in red, wondering how old the place really is… “1952”, says the gentleman behind the counter.

If you’re searching for a gray haired Anglo Indian hairdresser, there is no such man. Instead there is Amar Nath Bhardwaj’s nephew Suresh Kumar Attri, who laughs when you ask him, “Are you AN John?”

The Attris belonged to Kangra, their grandfather a vaid, would often ask Suresh’s father, Purshotaram to accompany him while he went to pick herbs, “My father was a free spirit, he’d ride about on his mare and was never interested in working. It was my uncle, Amar nath who had gone to London and to Paris to learn hairdressing”. It was on Suresh’s grandfather’s request that his uncle taught Purshotaram the business. “Uncle John was very fair and pink complexioned, he looked so European that his classmates began to call him John instead of Amar Nath!”says Suresh, who used to visit his uncle every summer vacation to learn the art of hairdressing.

After the course in London, Amar Nath set up a salon in Lahore. Suresh reads a passage from a Xeroxed page of Pran Neville’s “Lahore, A Sentimental Journey”.

“After a short stroll on the High Court lawns, we resume our tonga ride along the Mall. On our left we pass the shops of the famous hairdresser AN John, the optician Kirpa Ram, father of the well-known eye specialist Dr. Daulat Ram…My cousins show surprise that AN John a sahib, should be working as a barber. I explain that AN John is not an European. His name is Amar Nath; he learnt the art of hairdressing in England and added John to his name to attract European clients.”

“A regular customer, a sardarji, who works in ICICI Bank gave this to me,” Suresh says. An old customer, Dr. Manoj Singh reminisces his first haircut at AN John, “The salon wasn’t where it is today, it used to be at Royal Hotel, and I don’t remember the experience as much as the time when I walked into the salon”. Suresh quips that in 1952, his father had been working at his salon in Dehradoon when a prominent MLA asked him to come down to the capital instead. “We began to operate from Royal Hotel, but one of our customers of Kohli photographers, told us he was selling his old shop and moving into main Hazratganj, that is when we decided to shift here”.

The customers at AN John include Ms. Wilson a seventy year old lady who once owned Playway Academy, “She’s now at DC Home, an old age home but she still comes for her haircuts!” Others are Mrs. Ballard, the ex vice principal of Lamartinere Girls, Rani Kasbandha and the gentlemen are retired bureaucrats and ministers. “We are famous for our haircuts and hair coloring as well as eye makeup.There is a beauty parlor that my wife Meera runs upstairs”. Suresh’s brother intends to open another branch in Aliganj as well.

“Uncle John wasn’t an easy tutor! He used to rap us on our knuckles for each mistake made while cutting hair or trimming. I used to learn hairdressing from his salon on Park Street in Calcutta. After partition he had opened a salon in Shimla on Mall Road and subsequently moved to Park Street”, says Suresh. “ I wanted a break from haircutting and decided to join the restaurant business, I spent a year in Mumbai but nothing worked for me…and here I am”, he smiles.

Suresh’s daughter Anushree and son Siddhartha are uninterested in the business, “ My daughter wants to sit for her CAT this year and my son is still in 8^th grade, my wife and I will continue to work here as long as we can,” declares Mr. Attari. The nomad hairdressers have found their home in Lucknow, AN John continues to style the beautiful people of Lucknow…