‘I had no idea who Ed Sheeran was. I gave him a head massage’

Ed Sheeran who is in India for his tour, got an intense head massage from A Sandeep who runs Kerala Hair Dressers, a saloon started in 1939 in Chennai

A Sandeep encounters anywhere between 60 and 70 heads each day (except on Tuesday) at the 85-year-old Kerala Hair Dressers in Pondy Bazar. But on February 4, he received a call requiring secrecy and an international popstar.

“I had no idea who Ed Sheeran was. We said ‘hi’ to each other and began the massage. I gave it to three others,” he says.

In the video on Ed Sheeran HQ on Instagram, the artiste who is in India for his +–=÷× Tour (pronounced The Mathematics Tour), can be seen jokingly saying, “This is abuse”.

“I usually do not use the kind of force seen in the video but foreigners tend to like the pressure. They asked for it, actually. My daughter has been reading out the comments and customers have been asking it as well. Who knew he was as popular,” Sandeep says.

Sandeep however, is no stranger to celebrities. His oldest customer, most consistent customer is industrialist and famous T Nagar resident Nalli Kuppuswami Chetti. “Other famous personalities have visited over the years including Rajini. He used to pick calls on this telephone,” he recounts. Actor Sivakumar continues to get his hair cut at this shop opened in 1939, he says.

On a regular day though, Sandeep can be seen saying a cheerful “Hello,” leading customers to their ornate Burma teak chairs with old leather cushions. They tend to dole out nuggets of advice, tokens of appreciation and light quibbles about the trials and tribulations of the world. I suspect that Sandeep has taken to understanding life through parables that he hears from these heads. It is in these stories that he finds confidence to run a saloon that continues to charge only ₹150 for a haircut.

“There was a time when Rajini [kanth] was speaking about three rabbits.. no tortoise. Forget it, I don’t remember the animal. Anyway, these three were racing to the top of a mountain. Two failed as they were distracted by random noise. The third made it because he was deaf,” he says, dropping the first of his several lessons. “That is how one should be — deaf to all the noise but still being aware of what is to come. It is how one can succeed. It is why the saloon continues to run today,” he says.