Washing Clothes

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For the past ten days Ishani and her mom have been away, and my son and myself are in the self-help mode. And we split our chores rather neatly: he is the Chef and I the Dish-washer and  Clothes-cleaner.

And whenever I switch on our so-called fully automatic washing machine, I tend to look back on the good old days when dhobis were doing it with a personal touch. 

And whenever I think of dhobis my head comes up with these two memory tags :

1. Dhobi and Raamayan:

My Father used to tell us Raamayan episodes serially over a month and more at bedtime. And when it came to the bit about Lord Raam's expulsion and abandonment of (my favorite) Sita on the nasty insinuation of a common dhobi, I felt angry with that dhobi for his frivolous remarks against the chastity of Sita.

Later on I often wondered why the various Dhobi OBC Associations did not launch mass-protests against the  Raambhakt-Party for choosing a dhobi as the villain of the piece, rather than a tinker, tailor, cobbler or even teacher. 

But, this 2.2 minute video clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRw2pAQsKm8

has been my eye-opener. In this it is explained why a dhobi was chosen...he used to wash our dirty linen in public during my childhood. Moreover in the verbal duel between Raam the Ruler, and the Dhobi the ruled, it is the dhobi that emerges a clear winner...by yards. Perhaps that is why dhobis rather loved their epic role...the laugh is on the upper caste Khatriyas.

2. Dhobis and Donkeys

In our childhood village, Muthukur, every dhobi had one or more donkeys to do his legwork. And we had ample leisure to watch the donkey whose motto seemed to be: "Work is Worship". I can't say they never complained of their back-breaking load...they occasionally did give their famous 'reverse passes', especially during their love season when they took to their mating calls that woke everyone up in their siesta...but by and large they were beasts of burden...like us Research Scholars at AU all that long ago...my colleague Krishna Mohan and I were recently reminiscing those years...our common Research Guide suddenly turned a  Radhasomi Satsanghi  soon after we joined him and the only time he remembered us was when he had to organize the Dayalbagh Exhibition-cum-Sale at Vizagh...they used to sell ink and shoes...I don't know the connection.

RKN, 37 years older to me, recalls the dhobis and donkeys of his Mysore rather fondly:

"...In terms of money value it (the donkey) is the cheapest creature in the world. I found it out from a talk I had with my dhobi. He said that you could buy an ass, with all its limbs intact, for about 3 rupees. Imagine being able to acquire a thing that breathes and moves for the price of a cigarette tin!...

...When I pointed this out, my dhobi said that donkeys fed themselves on falling tree leaves. I ruled out this possibility. Our Vanamahotsava plantings, such as those as are still visible, are displaying only a geological rate of development.  He said lamely they ate the turf on the roadside. He knew that he sounded hollow while saying it. He became vague, but of one thing I could be definite: he himself gave it nothing to eat. Yet it served and carried all the burden heaped on its back. It was a vayubhakshaka as far as he was concerned. The moment it came home from the river or the lake and was unloaded, it was driven off, and he looked for it again only on the next washing day..."

 

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey

In our Village there was no river or lake...only a dirty pond that got dirtier by the day in summer. Till the next sumptuous rainfall. Each dhobi had his own rock jutting into the pond on its bank. The dirty linen that was downloaded from his donkey was first 'boiled' in an enormous vessel with perhaps some limestone, and after they were taken out, each was thrashed and beaten on the rock and squeezed and dried on unending lines and after a few hours in the hot sun, uploaded on the donkey and pressed and delivered....that is all.

No wonder we had dhobi's itch (ring worm in the groin) every once in a while and we had to constantly fiddle our violins and marbles...student and teachers alike.

And our poor cotton clothes never could stand the violent treatment they got and used to get punctured, torn and acquired all the colors that went into the boiler. And it was the constant job of wives to mend their husband's clothes...they never bothered about their kids'.

The donkeys were upright but all the dhobis had  hunchbacks perhaps acquired while bending and beating the clothes on the rock day in and day out.

The other day Ishani returned from her school and was playing on her half of our bed and crooning a Hindi rhyme that was new to me. I could decipher it started with a dhobi and Googled for it. Here is the nice clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_v5x8RA9PI

And this is what happened to Jerome and Co when they tried to wash their clothes in Thames:

"We stayed two days at Streatley, and got our clothes washed.  We had tried washing 

them ourselves, in the river, under George’s superintendence, and it had been a failure.

Indeed, it had been more than a failure, because we were worse off after we had

washed our clothes than we were before.  Before we had washed them, they had been
very, very dirty, it is true; but they were just wearable.  _After_ we had washed them—

well, the river between Reading and Henley was much cleaner, after we had washed 

our clothes in it, than it was before.  All the dirt contained in the river between Reading 

and Henley, we collected, during that wash, and worked it into our clothes.

The washerwoman at Streatley said she felt she owed it to herself to charge us just 

three times the usual prices for that wash.  She said it had not been like washing, it 

had been more in the nature of excavating.

We paid the bill without a murmur."

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