What I Won't Do for Research

A number of you have expressed some fascination with the street ironers that I’ve mentioned. I have been fascinated myself. There they stand, with piles of clothes all around them, some in heaps, some nicely ironed and folded. How do they do this out on the street with no electricity? And how do they have any idea which clothes belong to which customer?

The answer to the first question was easily observed. They have a little fire beside them and they put the coals into a large metal iron. It seems to do the trick. The other question remained a mystery.

When I lived with the manager at the office in which I’m working, her servant girl would wash, iron, and fold my things. It was wonderful! When I left that house, I gave her some money, so she hadn’t done work for an extra person for only her usual pay.

But now that I’ve shifted, I’m on my own. I can do my wash in the small machine that Mary has, or wash by hand in my bathroom. Either way, I then hang the clothes out on the line to dry. Not too difficult. But just about everything then has to be ironed. Mary has an iron and board that I am welcome to use, but that’s not really interesting enough to write a blog about.

So for the sake of research, I asked my landlady, Angelina, about taking some clothes to be ironed. Though she doesn’t take any of her things right now, she told me of problems she had had in the past with one down the street. Not all of her son’s shirts had been returned (partial answer to the second question), and, no matter what they said, things were never returned at the time they asked for, sometimes taking three or four days. We ignorant foreigners (hey, I truly am ignorant of how things are done here in India) have to be watched out for anyway, so she immediately said she would talk to the new ironer who was in front of a neighbor's house and find out whether he was honest and would not cheat me.

Apparently his answers were good--she received a price from him as well as a promise not to overcharge the foreigners--so in a little while we were headed there, me with just two items, since the others were in the process of being washed. It seemed like a good test case. He promised to deliver them to the house in half an hour. I’m pretty sure he missed that target by about another half hour, but they were nicely done, and delivered in what was certainly a reasonable time. In fact, once my wash was dry, I took seven more things to him (the research never stops), which he has promised to deliver later this afternoon.

The cost, you ask? You don’t really want to know. Really.

Okay-- two rupees each, which comes out to a total of about ten cents. No, I can’t send him to the US to work on your street. But you can come here.