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So you must have seen all the blog posts that tell you how bad the service is in the retail outlets in France? We did too. We were very concerned about this after our move to France. Thankfully, we have not had such experiences except with bankers. Bankers are a different story for a different day.

But today, I had such a positive experience that I wanted to share it with the world. I normally go to a hair salon near our apartment. The people there know that we do not know French all that well. The entire process goes very silently with them asking only the most important questions and we answering in rudimentary broken French. But I keep dreading that they might ask something complicated in French and I will not be able to answer.

Today, I saw that they had new staff in the salon. I was a bit concerned about this but still went in bravely (having too much hair is any day a worse situation!). There was English music playing in the salon and this reminded me of how Hindi music is played all over India even in places where they hardly understand the language.

When my turn for haircut came, the music suddenly changed to Hindi! The lady hairstylist was actually humming to it. Since I could not believe this (and unfortunately did not know the song), I had to pull up my iPhone and use an app (Soundhound) to find what song this was. Seeing this, the lady told me in broken English that this was from the movie “Fanaa“. We then went onto having a conversation (of course in broken French and English!) about Bollywood, languages in India and how much she likes Kajol (a bollywood actor)! She told me that I can get all the bollywood music that I want from youtube.

Anyway, it was quite amazing that she took the initiative to play the Hindi music which made my experience so much better. Hopefully, people traveling to France can see this post and have such a positive experience too.