Soap opera
Mumbai needs clean clothes. The city with one of the world’s largest populations works, plays and lives frenetically amid smoke, dirt and oppressive heat. But how do 15 million people get their clothes cleaned, pressed and delivered?
The answer is an army of washermen and -women: the dhobis. Each day, the dhobis fan out across the city, collecting dirty linen from households and
taking it back to the dhobi ghats: large makeshift washing areas that feature row upon row of concrete pens, each fitted with its own flogging stone.
The most famous dhobi ghat is at Saat Rasta, near Mahalaxmi Station. Here, more than 150 laundry contractors and their families work. Each contractor employs around 20–30 dhobis, usually migrant workers from other parts of India.
Working as a dhobi at the ghats is tough, even for a labour class as used to backbreaking work as India’s. More than half don’t last longer than a year. They usually come from India’s poorest states – Bihar and Uttar Pradesh – attracted by the promise of food and shelter, but minimal pay: an average working week is more than 100 hours, for which they earn between 500 and 750 rupees (£6–£9).
Each day’s work at the ghats is an endless procession of cleaning, ironing, folding and returning Mumbai’s clothes. The dhobis often stand for hours at a time knee-deep in the waters of the ghats, immersed in their respective duties.
The process of washing and drying is simple, but the amount of laundry to be dealt with is vast: every day, some half a million items of clothing are sent
to the ghats to be washed. Organisation, labour division and teamwork is vital.
The new batches of dirty clothes are first coded to match each client. Each dhobi has his own code, making a unique symbol or character in black indelible ink on the garments belonging to a particular household.
They are then sorted into colours and handed over to the beaters, who soak them and then literally beat the dirt out of them on the flogging stones. This position is usually reserved for the newcomers or the illiterate: it’s highly repetitive and requires enormous mental and physical stamina, as it involves beating the clothes against stone slabs for more than 12 hours at a time in the stifling heat without any shade or breeze. To keep going, the beaters often repeat a word to themselves, a mantra that helps to focus their minds and to keep fatigue at bay.
Next, the scrubbers take over. Their job is to scrub out all of the stains that couldn’t be beaten out. They use a strong bleaching detergent, which quickly causes their hands to become sore and wrinkled among the soap bubbles and suds.
Finally, the clothes are hung to dry in long, brightly coloured lines. All available space is used as the liners scurry around putting wet garments up and taking dry ones down. ‘You could work 30 years at the ghats and still get lost and disorientated when the clothes are out,’ one dhobi liner says.
After the lining and drying is done, it’s time for the top job – as surprising as it may sound, the place where all the men compete to be is at the ironing board. ‘It takes skill to iron properly and without destroying any clothes, so a good ironer will demand the top wage of 3,000 rupees [a month],’ a dhobi ironer explains. However, even here, the work is hard. Wood-burning irons are often used, and inside the small sheds where the ironing takes place en masse, the heat is unbearable.
Life for a dhobi is difficult. In addition to the backbreaking work, they are typically away from their families for almost a year at a time. Many support large families back home in the villages with their relatively high Mumbai wages, but their absence often takes a toll.
Many of the migrant workers visit sex workers. Due to the lonely nature of occupations of low status and shared migrant backgrounds, the local sex workers and the dhobis enjoy a close relationship. ‘The opportunity for sex is high and is present every day,’ says one dhobi worker. ‘They need the business and think of us dhobis as good customers. We need each other.’
Whatever the reasons, family-planning NGOs have identified the need to reach out to both groups, and have started to give condom demonstrations and hold free clinics on contraception and prevention. ‘The dhobi workers have entered a high-risk category for HIV and AIDS,’ says Wandanna, a co-ordinator at the Family Planning Association of India. HIV is spreading at an alarming rate in India, and the dhobi ghat workers are on the front line.
Questions linger over the future of the dhobi workers. Some of the city’s increasingly affluent residents have started to send their dirty clothes to smaller, personalised launderettes, or to do their laundry themselves. In parts of Mumbai, state-of-the-art laundries have sprung up to cater for these people, many of whom believe the new systems will have lower water and detergent consumption, and ensure hygiene.
But for the time being, most are content to use the ghats for their traditional, efficient services. So Mumbai’s dhobi men keep on beating, scrubbing, ironing and folding.
August 2007
The answer is an army of washermen and -women: the dhobis. Each day, the dhobis fan out across the city, collecting dirty linen from households and
taking it back to the dhobi ghats: large makeshift washing areas that feature row upon row of concrete pens, each fitted with its own flogging stone.
The most famous dhobi ghat is at Saat Rasta, near Mahalaxmi Station. Here, more than 150 laundry contractors and their families work. Each contractor employs around 20–30 dhobis, usually migrant workers from other parts of India.
Working as a dhobi at the ghats is tough, even for a labour class as used to backbreaking work as India’s. More than half don’t last longer than a year. They usually come from India’s poorest states – Bihar and Uttar Pradesh – attracted by the promise of food and shelter, but minimal pay: an average working week is more than 100 hours, for which they earn between 500 and 750 rupees (£6–£9).
Each day’s work at the ghats is an endless procession of cleaning, ironing, folding and returning Mumbai’s clothes. The dhobis often stand for hours at a time knee-deep in the waters of the ghats, immersed in their respective duties.
The process of washing and drying is simple, but the amount of laundry to be dealt with is vast: every day, some half a million items of clothing are sent
to the ghats to be washed. Organisation, labour division and teamwork is vital.
The new batches of dirty clothes are first coded to match each client. Each dhobi has his own code, making a unique symbol or character in black indelible ink on the garments belonging to a particular household.
They are then sorted into colours and handed over to the beaters, who soak them and then literally beat the dirt out of them on the flogging stones. This position is usually reserved for the newcomers or the illiterate: it’s highly repetitive and requires enormous mental and physical stamina, as it involves beating the clothes against stone slabs for more than 12 hours at a time in the stifling heat without any shade or breeze. To keep going, the beaters often repeat a word to themselves, a mantra that helps to focus their minds and to keep fatigue at bay.
Next, the scrubbers take over. Their job is to scrub out all of the stains that couldn’t be beaten out. They use a strong bleaching detergent, which quickly causes their hands to become sore and wrinkled among the soap bubbles and suds.
Finally, the clothes are hung to dry in long, brightly coloured lines. All available space is used as the liners scurry around putting wet garments up and taking dry ones down. ‘You could work 30 years at the ghats and still get lost and disorientated when the clothes are out,’ one dhobi liner says.
Start the slideshow (8 pictures)
After the lining and drying is done, it’s time for the top job – as surprising as it may sound, the place where all the men compete to be is at the ironing board. ‘It takes skill to iron properly and without destroying any clothes, so a good ironer will demand the top wage of 3,000 rupees [a month],’ a dhobi ironer explains. However, even here, the work is hard. Wood-burning irons are often used, and inside the small sheds where the ironing takes place en masse, the heat is unbearable.
Life for a dhobi is difficult. In addition to the backbreaking work, they are typically away from their families for almost a year at a time. Many support large families back home in the villages with their relatively high Mumbai wages, but their absence often takes a toll.
Many of the migrant workers visit sex workers. Due to the lonely nature of occupations of low status and shared migrant backgrounds, the local sex workers and the dhobis enjoy a close relationship. ‘The opportunity for sex is high and is present every day,’ says one dhobi worker. ‘They need the business and think of us dhobis as good customers. We need each other.’
Whatever the reasons, family-planning NGOs have identified the need to reach out to both groups, and have started to give condom demonstrations and hold free clinics on contraception and prevention. ‘The dhobi workers have entered a high-risk category for HIV and AIDS,’ says Wandanna, a co-ordinator at the Family Planning Association of India. HIV is spreading at an alarming rate in India, and the dhobi ghat workers are on the front line.
Questions linger over the future of the dhobi workers. Some of the city’s increasingly affluent residents have started to send their dirty clothes to smaller, personalised launderettes, or to do their laundry themselves. In parts of Mumbai, state-of-the-art laundries have sprung up to cater for these people, many of whom believe the new systems will have lower water and detergent consumption, and ensure hygiene.
But for the time being, most are content to use the ghats for their traditional, efficient services. So Mumbai’s dhobi men keep on beating, scrubbing, ironing and folding.
August 2007
|
FIND OUT WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT ON TWITTER:
| |
 |
