The 2Ws of this weekend: Washing & Water

I dread weekends for a phobia that has still now not been documented by the etymologists of the modern day world but I guess the phobia that I am talking about is as wide spread across the world as Sardarjis in a jokes book. The phobia can be termed as Washophobia that can be defined as an irritational persistent fear of doing the laundry every weekend. I would be happy enough to do the mopping and cleaning and the utensil washing but washing clothes is the last torture that I can ever subject myself to. The laundry problem has haunted me since I left the confines of the sweet little heavan called home and landed up in a hostel of a B-school some 1500kms away from home. At IMT the dhobi became my best friend to get me out of the torture of washing clothes, a person who had almost single handedly taken up the entire responsibility of washing away the dirty linen of an enitre ecosystem of B-school hostel dwellers. No doubt his face features well in any kind of documentary the Alumni committee of IMT makes for the Alumni Meets to make us feel nostalgic about those two years at Ghaziabad. But even the dhobi of IMT had his own reservations when it came to washing up more UP, CLOSE to the body & PERSONAL stuffs (read undies and ganjees) and I had to really motivate myself to clean these items of daily usage often running into crisis with improper demand estimation for these stuffs. Though my cleaning phobia failed to vanish it was much of a solace for me to see that people shared the same phobia as me and paid a heavy price for it. To cite an example Mr. Manish Bindra previously menitioned 2 blog entries down was one such person who had almost forgotten the fact, I guess intentionally that he had once upon a time soaked his three shirts and two pants in soap water to wash them in the near future. Alas the near future came almost 14 days later when he finally realised that they had rotten away in their own glory emitting as stinky and disgusting a smell as a goat's pen.

The washing woes were accentuated when I landed up in Bangalore as I studied the economics of the washing scene in and around the place I stay. Unbeilivably the price for washing any piece of attire was almost double the amount our dear old dhobi at IMT charged. The first few experience of laundry proved to be disastrous. The shirts as well as trousers though well washed and well ironed seemed to be losing one button every time it went to the washerman's torturous hands. The buttons always seemed to be smittered into pieces and what remained were small pieces suspended from the strings used to fasten it to the piece of clothing. Considering the fact that the torture was becoming a bit too much for every piece of decent clothing I ever owned I decided to pass on the noble responsibility of washing my clothes to the bai who did not understand even a single word that I spoke. Thanks to her I became good in using all kinds of sign languages to make my thoughts be known. A person whose attendance record was much worser than the attendance record of MPs from Chhapra at the Parliament of India, she takes pleasure in bunking work almost half the month. But at least she did turn up on the weekends and she never did complain when I would put the heap of clothes which almost looked like a mini K2. But alas this weekend she decided to land me in a whole bucket of filthy tomato soup by again bunking on Saturday and Sunday. Monday being a holiday for a lesser known festival called Ugadi in Karnataka (imagine not giving even one single day off in Durga Puja even when so many Bengalis work in our office) I started praying that she shows up to wish me a Happy Ugadi and wash my clothes. I knew that if she ditched me that day I would surely have to endure the nightmare of washing a bucket full of clothes. And finally she did show up and I was as thrilled as Mr Ganguly and with great difficulty restrained myself from doing the jersey dance.

Weekend was also about catching up with Akshara and seeing her splurging money on girly stuffs. Books, clothes, electronics as well as pieces of make up which just looked the same color as a Cafe Coffee Day's Cool blue granita, she was buying it all. And finally it was also about getting a last minute ticket for the Oscar nominated Indian entry called Water which considering that it was Ugadi is as improbable a feat as seeing a capless Himesh or imagining Hitler without his toothbrush bristle moostache. So there was Akshara and me making a dash to get the last few seats left and by a stroke of luck we were able to get relatively decent seats and we did not have to twist and turn and fracture our necks by sitting in the front few rows. Water was about the evils society had created in the name of spirituality. And yah society has come a long way since the 1939 portrayed there with women competing in every field and often surpassing them to acheive rare distinctions. It was also about John Abraham looking cute in dhotis and kurtas and acheiving some much needed points on the acting index. It finally did not look that superficial. And finally it was about the Laddu, synonymous with fulfilling every dream and desire of heart before u die because kise pata Kal ho na Ho....