Bangalore

Laundering medieval style – saris, jeans, and tablecloths hang to dry between slums and thoroughfares

Every Mumbai travel guidebook tells tourists that the place where the laundry of the city of 18 million people is washed is a must-see. The Indians I ask about it – people from the upper middle class – don’t find the subject quite as interesting. Nowadays more and more people have their own washing machines. That in itself is a reason to visit the Dhobi Ghat laundry; it’s an expedition to the middle ages.

From colourful saris to white men’s shirts to jeans of all kinds, from restaurant table linens to hotel towels, everything dangles from the lines in Dhobi Ghat that is worn and therefore needs to be washed in Mumbai. Hotels, restaurants, hospitals, and private individuals make use of the service because it’s cheaper than buying their own washing machines and the electricity that they consume.

Usually, the Indians wash their clothes in the river. My taxi-driving guide also washes his laundry in the river, but he lives outside of Mumbai. Since this megacity does not have a suitable river, at one point it built its own huge laundry plant. It is located behind the slums of Mahalaxmi Station, right on the railway line, between thoroughfares and modern skyscrapers. Other Indian cities have similar public laundry plants, also Bangalore, but this one is said to be the largest in the world.

No, he won’t go inside with me, my guide Philipp declares resolutely. He did that once with a tourist couple. They got such a bad rash on their feet from the chemicals that they had to be sent to hospital. Only from a busy thoroughfare bridge he explains to me how the “Mister Cleans” down there toil.

They work twelve hours per day. The dirty laundry is picked up on specific days from the individual city districts. Tied into huge bales, it is brought in on wooden carts. Each item is embroidered with a monogram so that it is returned to the proper owner. One shirt including ironing costs 10 rupees or about 16 cents. For a taxi driver like Philipp that is a lot of money. He earns 6,000 to 7,000 rupees a month; a little over 100 euros. His wife died of cancer; he still has two daughters and a son to feed.

Here, washing is exclusively a men’s job. The men in Dhobi Ghat earn more than Philipp in his white shirt; namely 200 to 300 rupees per day. Many of them only keep this job for half a year before returning to their homes in northern India, where they buy grain and try their luck as farmers. About 2,000 day labourers work in Dhobi Ghat and they live right on the premises in meagre little huts.

As they stand between the exhaust fumes and the abundance of refuse to observe the wringing and cleaning process every tourist doubts whether the textiles are truly hygienic in the end. But somehow things do get clean. Very soiled items are soaked for hours in vats, explains Philipp. The “main washing cycle” takes place in masoned laundry tubs that the men lease for 300 rupees a month. They stand in them, beating the wet laundry against a stone, up to their calves in water. They use three kinds of water, explains Philipp. For the final cycle, the rinse cycle so to say, they use very clear water. Then the textiles are dried in a forest of clotheslines, with the exception of monsoon season when every customer has to see to drying their own things. Pressed and folded, the items finally are put back on the wooden carts and returned to the customers.