Rubiya Parlour

The parlour is in Shop No-3 of Raja Appartment, which is on Ashok Road in the Ashok Nagar area of Nashik. It’s a quiet little corner in a busy part of town. I’ve been operating out of this apartment shop for a while. It’s not a very big space, but it’s enough for what I do. I have a main chair for hair and a smaller section in the back for other things. People from the apartments upstairs often just walk down in their house slippers to get things done. It feels very much like a community spot. Ashok Road has a lot of shops, but since we are inside the apartment building complex, it stays a bit more private. I spend a lot of time cleaning the mirrors because they get smudged easily. The lighting is just normal tubes, nothing fancy like you see on TV. Sometimes when the water pressure is low, I have to fill up buckets in advance, but we manage. My regular customers usually call me on my mobile before coming over to see if I’m free. I don’t have a big sign outside, just a small one near the gate of Raja Appartment. It is a steady way to make a living and I enjoy talking to the women who stop by. We talk about the vegetable prices or the local schools while I work. It’s just a normal, everyday shop for the people who live in this neighborhood.