The laundry men of home win hands down

I miss having a dhobi (laundry man) – a normal household fixture in Pakistan and India. This lifesaver comes to your house to pick up your laundry, washes and irons it and delivers it to your doorstep for a pittance.

Raise your hand if you are guilty of not getting around to doing the laundry until you are on your last pair of socks.

Raise your other hand if you are guilty of cringing at the thought of having to take the laundry out of the washer/dryer once it’s done.

Now wiggle all your fingers if you are guilty of turning the dryer on for one more cycle just because you don’t have the energy or the inclination to take the laundry out just yet.

I’ve never been technology crazy, but every time I am confronted with Mount Washamore, I wish I had a “washing wardrobe”. Yes, its just what it sounds like: a wardrobe that washes your clothes. You simply hang your dirty clothes in it and through a complex combination of ionisation, humidity, air pressure and ozone, all stains are removed and odour-causing bacteria banished. Sadly, it’s just a concept. Until someone manages to make it a commercially available consumer product, I will have to do with the front-loading monster that stares accusingly at me every time I step into my kitchen.

And that’s when I miss having a dhobi (laundry man) – a normal fixture in households across Pakistan and India. The world was formally introduced to this in Aamir Khan’s 2010 movie Dhobi Ghat (it was longlisted for the 65th Bafta Awards). Without a dhobi, the life of millions of housewives would come to a grinding halt.

For desis back home who can’t afford a washing machine (or choose not to buy one), not having to do their laundry is not seen as a luxury, because that’s where the dhobi steps in. This lifesaver comes to your house to pick up your laundry, washes and irons it, and delivers it to your doorstep for an absolute pittance. And so, in what is a bizarre irony, the only people stuck doing their own clothes are the ones who can afford to buy washing machines. (Of course, there are people who can afford to hire housemaids to operate them, but that’s another story for another day.)

My mum was pretty quick to figure out that owning a washer and dryer was a mixed blessing. Both machines were eventually moved to the balcony where they rusted in peace while our clothes were handed over to the dhobi who came by once a week to pick up a new batch and to drop off the previous week’s.

Cheap and efficient, the dhobi is not to be confused with an actual laundry service, which does the same job at prices that can make you gag. These guys do the washing in the antiseptic environs of their own shop (or so they claim). The dhobi, on the other hand, does not have the luxury of a shop – his main tools of trade are industrial-sized buckets. But the clothes come back spotless, wrinkle-free and smelling as fresh as they would from a high-end laundry service. What’s not to like?

Besides, I have yet to employ a dhobi who has lost an item of my clothing. Their unbelievably accurate (and invisible) tagging system is quite foolproof. Now compare this with the laundry shop I frequent here in Dubai, which gave me somebody else’s jacket last week. It’s a size 8 in navy blue. Holler if it’s yours.

The writer is an honest-to-goodness desi living in Dubai