Indian men haircut shave video3/13/2023 ![]() Mohammed Armaan Ahmed gives a head massage to one of his most regular customers, Haji Abdullah, in his barber shop in Kuala Belait, Brunei. Armed with little else other than haircutting skills, Armaan landed in a country he had known little about, but to one which he would quickly adapt. It was curiosity to travel and a desire to see the world that made Mohammed Armaan Ahmed board a flight from Kolkata to Brunei a little over two decades ago. When the Chinese began losing their customers to Indian barbers, they just shut shop and moved back to Malaysia,” Ida said. “Another thing to remember is that Brunei has a tiny population, which is not conducive to business competition. When the Chinese barbers slowly began returning to Sarawak, that space was filled by Indian barbers. Then one day in 1984, the year we gained independence, we were told that shops and businesses would no longer accept Malaysian notes and coins.” This meant that we could use both Singaporean and Malaysian money in addition to our own. Pre-independence, the currencies in Brunei, Singapore and Malaysia were interchangeable. “The Sarawakian-Chinese left after Brunei gained independence, because our currencies were no longer compatible. Prior to Brunei’s independence in January 1984 from the United Kingdom, the business of barber shops and hair salons was dominated by Sarawakian-Chinese from Sarawak, Ida explained. ![]() There were several domestic factors that helped create space for Indian barbers to grow their businesses and flourish. ![]() Mohammed Armaan Ahmed at work in his barber shop in Kuala Belait, Brunei. Indian barbers quickly became known for the special services that they provided, not usually available elsewhere, like head and shoulder massages, quick shaves and basic skin care, all offered at low prices-services commonly available in local barber shops in north India especially in Uttar Pradesh, where a large percentage of Indian barbers in Brunei are originally from. It wasn’t just their mastery at haircutting that set them apart from other communities in the business. Soon after he arrived in Brunei all those years ago, Ahmed’s grandfather had realised that there was a huge market for the skills that Indian barbers possessed, Ahmed told. Izehar Ahmed’s family has been in the haircutting business for at least three generations in their hometown Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, and it was these skills that helped Ahmed’s grandfather first move to Brunei some four decades ago, when few in their community had even heard of the country. Today, they form a majority in the Indian community in the country. The labourers who were brought to these rubber plantations were mostly of Tamil origin, writes Sridevi Menon in her research article ‘Narrating Brunei: Travelling histories of Brunei Indians’, published in 2016. The second group consisted of labourers in the four rubber plantations of Brunei.” The pre-World War II immigration of Indians to that region was divided into two groups, write K S Sandhu and A Mani in their book ‘Indian Communities in Southeast Asia’: “The Indians who engaged in trading and commerce came of their own accord and set up their businesses in various urban centers. Several decades before Indians became dominant in the country’s barber shop business, it was the discovery of oil that first brought Indians to Brunei in 1929. “Everyone I know goes to an Indian barber,” Ida, a Brunei resident, told. A barber shop, known as Kedia Gunting in Malay, in Kiulap, Brunei-Muara District, Brunei.
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