Reading Rekindled

When it comes to gadgets, I am no early adopter. I wait for the new technology to shake off the initial problems and get stabilized first. Even then, I may decide to hold out - case in point, I still use a flip phone. Naturally, when eReaders first came out, I was in no rush to get one. This was not some newer, better way, but a fundamentally different way of reading books. Surfing the internet and reading articles is one thing, but the idea of reading an entire book on a screen takes some getting used to. And there is much more to books than just reading.

When you buy a book, it is primarily for reading, but like with many things we enjoy, the other senses too play a part. The feel of the book, the  rustle of the pages when you turn them, the glossy cover and the new book smell - all these add to the whole reading experience. You can also discretely broadcast to others what you are reading, in the process, perhaps impressing them, without having to say a word. Your collection of books can be displayed neatly on shelves with pride of ownership. A wall of books is so inviting, is it not?

My father had a fairly large library housed in several shelves. This collection was quite impressive with books in English, Sanskrit and Tamil on many different subjects from Silappathikaram to Shakespeare. You would find literary classics as well as some contemporary authors. Those books are an important memory from my boyhood. When I picked up one of them and opened it, I would see my father's name, sometimes along with the date when it was purchased. Many of them had been published and purchased well before I was born. Every time we moved, which was once every three years or so, the books would be packed carefully in wooden crates. The shelves themselves were disassembled and packed for the move as well.

When you look through an old book, you get a sense of shared history. Many hands must have browsed the same pages. There may be some notes in the margin by readers past. There may be an old photograph or letter tucked between the pages. You may also find a feather, a leaf, or a bookmark there. The book may have passed from one generation to another. Some may be collector's items, being the first edition of the book or bearing the author's signature; some with old dust jackets intact, others with a calico or leather binding, and so on. Each book seems unique in some way.

Higginbothams, Chennai

I used to acquire books pretty regularly at one time. Every time I went on a business trip, I would buy a book from the little bookshop at the old Bangalore airport just before boarding the plane. It was a little hole in the wall, but the collection in that shop was considerable and amazingly varied. Almost all the PG Wodehouse novels I have, were acquired there as also a few Edward de Bono's and such. Even when travelling by trains, we had the old Higginbothams (the oldest booksellers in India) stalls at many stations ready to provide reading material for the journey. The Higginbothams building in Chennai, which is a historical landmark, was a favourite haunt of mine.

Over the years, I seem to have lost the reading habit. Instead, television and the internet have taken over my spare time. Keen to revive my reading, I recently decided to give eReaders a try with the idea that the novelty would act as a catalyst. I knew that I had to forego the whole gamut of experience that I have had with printed books. Plus, the eReader has come with its own idiosyncrasies. For instance, when I pick it up to read a book, I cannot tell you how many pages the book has. But I can see that I have completed 23% and the estimated time to finish is 7 hours and 34 minutes. If I wish to thumb back to a page I have already read, it is a complex task involving several buttons and a search engine. Reading a book from cover to cover has become more of a figurative thing. While I have several books stored in the Kindle, only one person can read at a time. It is ridiculously simple to purchase an eBook (spending money is always easy), but if you want it signed by the author, tough luck. You are limited in the choice of languages. And so on.

I have managed to read a few books in the last three months and seem to have sort of got used to the device and its quirks. The ability to carry a large collection of books in my hands is certainly an advantage as I am able to switch among several books that I am reading now. I am also able to download free of charge many old classics (including some newer ones that are more than 70 years old) for which copyright has run out. Most importantly, I am once again reading books. I think that is a good thing, whether I read them the old fashioned way, or under a nook using my Kindle. And if I really like a book, perhaps I will go out and buy a hard copy for my collection!

(Image Courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Higginbothams.jpg)

Stubble Trouble

As I moved the shaver across my cheek, the humming noise filled my ear and tended to block out the rest of the world. It has been almost two years since I switched to the electric shaver. I paused to reflect on my decision to abandon the traditional razor. While I find the electric variety quite satisfactory, I kind of miss the whole warm water and lather experience. My electric razor can be used with water and soap, but it is not quite the same. It is also bulky and noisy.

Shaving is a chore that I can do without, but paradoxically, I generally enjoy shaving. There is something about the warm water, the lather, the sound of the razor against the stubble, the sting of the after-shave splash and so on that is purely masculine. Shaving also holds a unique place in a man's life. It is one of the markers of passage into manhood. Young boys watch their fathers shave and cannot wait for the day when they too will join the privileged club.

Like most in my generation, I first started shaving with a safety razor which remains the most important milestone in the world of men's shaving. Before its invention, shaving oneself with a straight razor was a dangerous affair with some serious risk of slicing one's neck and hence, a task best left to professionals. I think that beards were popular then more out of compulsion than choice. By the way, barbers who were experts at wielding the scalpel, or the razor, also doubled as surgeons in the not too distant past. Barber surgeons used to perform minor surgery apart from cutting hair and shaving.

When the safety razor made it possible for all men to shave on their own without risk of decapitation, shaving became a daily routine for many - assembling the razor, dipping the brush in warm water, swiping it on the soap and then applying the soap on the face to work up a lather, etc. But this tends to take some time, time that is usually in short supply in the morning when you are scrambling to get ready for class or work.

Enter the instant lathering cream/gel and the need for a brush was eliminated, thus saving time. This was followed soon by shavers that came with cartridge blades which did away with the assembling and dismantling of the razor and saved even more time. The most important innovation to me was the twin-blade cartridge. This really improved the quality of the shave over a single-blade cartridge razor. Two edges worked better than one. No surprise there, I suppose.

Then, the floodgates apparently opened. We started getting cartridges with more and more cutting edges added. I thought six blades (or is it five?) is about as far as you can go. Well, apparently not, if this is real (yes, that's a twelve blade cartridge). I get the impression that I can keep opening the thing like a bellows to reveal more and more blades. You can watch this MadTV video for a hilarious take on the proliferation of cutting edges.

But exactly what are we getting with these razors? Just the thought of six blades shearing my face one after the other makes my skin crawl. I wonder if you can even ensure that all the cutting edges actually make contact with the skin. I mean, look at the geometry of the thing, the angle of the blades, the gap between them and the terrain they have to cover. The thing defies science. More than likely, the space between blades will get clogged with stubble or worse, bits of skin. If a proper analysis is carried out, I am sure it will be very revealing. But assuming you did make the necessary contact, what value could more blades bring other than leaving your skin raw and smarting with razor burns?

Advertisements used to say that the second blade cuts the hair missed by the first one. What about the third and subsequent blades? How much do the first two miss and leave for them? Do they have any stubble left to shave or do they start scraping the skin? Some aficionados like to point out that shaving with a three-blade cartridge is equivalent of shaving thrice with a single blade, but in a third of the time taken. I don't know why anyone would shave thrice in a row let alone doing it six times at a go. I don't even bother shaving six times in a week.

With the old models of blade cartridges becoming scarce, one is forced to buy the newer ones at ever increasing prices. This, I am sure, is real the motivation behind all those fancy newer cartridges. Some even 'tell' you when to change cartridges (that is, when you need to do your share to replenish the manufacturer's profit, I suppose). I finally got frustrated enough to put aside my razor and purchase an electric shaver.

You may wonder why I cannot give up shaving altogether and grow a beard, putting an end to all this. Ogden Nash once said, 'God in his wisdom made the fly, And then forgot to tell us why'. I feel the same way about facial hair. There is a basic question that nags me. Why do we have facial hair? I mean, what purpose is served by it? I cannot really see the reason for it. No offence to those sporting a beard, but a beard is mostly a nuisance and rarely looks good. Besides, it still needs grooming. I have reached the conclusion that it exists only to be shaved. But still, I tried growing a beard once in a weak moment. The resulting look got mixed feedback. By mixed, I mean that it was divided evenly between 'hideous' and 'revolting' and I decided that I would not grow a beard again.

The Packing Pickle

'That suitcase is not going to fit in that car', I thought to myself, as I waited for my ride outside the terminal. The woman who had arrived with it had been met by the man driving the car. She looked like she was his aunt or something. She got into the front seat and left him to deal with the bags which included a gargantuan suitcase. Jokes about how to get elephants into a car came to my mind. It was going to be interesting. I sat down on the bench and looked on with some excitement.

For the next five minutes, the man waged a keen and absorbing battle with the suitcases. I watched him rapidly try different combinations and sequences to load the bags into the trunk. Nothing seemed to work. It was like solving a jigsaw puzzle except that there was an extra piece which you could not leave out. The large case simply would not fit into the trunk whether straight in or sideways. Finally, in desperation, he pushed it into the backseat where it was a really tight squeeze. For a few tense seconds, it looked like it as going to get stuck midway, but miraculously, it slid in between the front and back seats. I was so intently watching the whole drama that when he closed the trunk and turned around he caught my eye and I had to do something. I gave him a thumbs up. Accepting it with good humour, he came over and gave me a fist bump. As he drove off, I was certain that he was going to have an even bigger challenge extricating that suitcase from the back seat.

Even though airlines have restrictions on the size, suitcases seem to have grown larger over the last several years. The wheels do make it easy to pull them along, but these suitcases are shaped in all sorts of odd ways making it difficult to load them into cars and unload. At the same time, cars are now trending smaller promising more and more scenes like the above.

At the airport, checking the bags is of course fairly easy. You just need to get them to the counter. But it is quite a task picking up a big suitcase from the baggage carousel at the destination. I often see people struggling to get hold of the handle which is always on the wrong side as the suitcase speeds along the belt. For some reason, perhaps as a cruel joke, the handlers load them on to the belt with the handles out of the reach of waiting passengers. I can almost picture a small framed passenger being pulled on to the belt while trying to get hold of a big suitcase.

It is not just loading and unloading that presents a challenge. Have you noticed how taxing it is to pack those huge molded suitcases that open like clam shells? First, you have to ask everyone else to leave the room before you can open one because it will occupy the better part of a room when opened all the way. Then, you have to pack the two sides separately. You walk back and forth across the room to get it filled. Once it is packed, you have to lift the heavy top side (or bottom as usually you cannot tell which is which) and close it over the other. In this process, some of the items always fall out. Some others will stick out just enough to prevent the sides from closing cleanly. Even if there is the slightest obstruction, the latch cannot be engaged. Sometimes, you have to sit on the suitcase to make it close. And if you have to reopen it to pack some more things, well, you get to perform this dance all over again.

My own preference is to travel as light as possible. So I select the smallest suitcase that can serve the needs of a trip. I also go with the soft bags. They are easier to lift, load and unload. It is also easy to pack a smaller bag really full so that the contents remain stable during the journey. They can be opened easily without requiring extra room. There is no confusion about which side is up. And, while I have no evidence to support this, I suspect that soft bags are handled less harshly by airlines staff since they don't look like tanks as the hard ones do. I could go on, but I guess it is ultimately a matter of personal choice. If you ask for my advice, pick a case you can pack without getting into a pickle.

Deepavali Flash(back)

This one is especially for all Indians living abroad. I wrote this several years ago when I wanted to explain what Deepavali was all about to children growing up here in the US. 

For children in India, Deepavali is a time of magic. As in everything else Indian, there are a number of regional flavors to it, but Deepavali is truly a national festival.

I grew up in Tamil Nadu and have wonderful memories of Deepavali. This is a day when we wanted to get up early – I mean really early, say 4 am or even before – despite the fact that we had to have a bath immediately and an oil bath at that (there is always a catch, isn't there?). No, we were not crazy, as you will soon see. For those of you who may not have seen the hour of 4 am, believe me it was anything but quiet on Deepavali at 4 am. If you were still sleeping, you would wake up to the deafening sounds of firecrackers.

Being the first on the block to light up the fireworks gave one bragging rights. So my brothers and I got up early and took our oil bath. My mother would have prepared the oil the previous day and she would apply it to our hair. She had strong hands, so we were quickly awake and alert. Then came the bath in warm water with “cheekkai” (a herbal shampoo powder) to wash off the oil. In our hurry to get ready and light the fireworks, we would get the bath over so quickly that half the oil did not get washed off. The leftover oil would slowly descend to our faces during the rest of the day. We then got to wear new clothes, which were arranged neatly in the pooja room. Once we got our clothes on, we would rush out and light a candle from which we could light the sparklers or light up the incense stick with which to set off the loud crackers.

The whole idea was to light up the entire neighborhood with sparklers and other types of fireworks. Obviously, you had to do this while it was still dark. There was a wide variety of fireworks available - the flowerpot, the ‘Tharai chakram’ or ground wheel, the ‘Vishnu chakram’ or spinning wheel, rockets and so on. Rockets lit up the skies soaring over homes and palm trees. Flowerpots would give off intense colourful displays of fireworks. These displays would be punctuated with the loud bursting of some cracker or the other – these had names too, like the sparrow, the electric, Shivaji, Lakshmi and Vishnu. These crackers looked like sticks of dynamite and had fuses made of string and paper extending out. It was quite a thrill to light the fuse, retreat to a safe distance and watch the explosion – the flash and the bang. There was also the atom bomb (relax, they had no nuclear content), which was the loudest. My favorites were the string crackers. These came in strings of 50, 100, etc. to one with 10,000! You set off one off these and the individual sticks go off in tandem and the effect was magical. The 10,000-cracker garland sounded like a couple of motorbikes accelerating real hard and went on and on!

After a couple of hours of fun outside, we would come back into the house for an early snack of delicious sweets and savories. Deepavali was an occasion for making some traditional dishes as well as for trying out novel recipes. After this feast, there was the traditional Ginger lehyam (halwa of sorts), which was consumed to prevent indigestion. How thoughtful of our forefathers to think of everything! Actually, this was quite tasty in itself.

Mid-morning was a slow period spent exchanging notes with friends. We would also compare the amount of debris in front of different houses left from the firecrackers – these were packed with paper, bits of which got strewn all over when the tightly packed charge inside exploded. We would have exhausted most of the crackers (some were saved for the night) and would start unstringing the string crackers so we could light them one by one. There were the inevitable duds among these, which fail to go off for some reason. We would open these and empty the charge inside into a paper. When you lit the paper, it went up in glorious smoke, but this could be a dangerous game. There were always reports of some kid getting his hand burnt doing this.

This was also the time for some pranks. Some kids would light a string of crackers and throw an old pot over it for some special effects. The pot danced around with muffled sounds coming from inside. Or they would light an atom bomb and put a coconut shell over it. The shell would fly an impressive distance when the bomb exploded. You could say this was the educational side to Deepavali on the streets, trying out Newton’s laws of motion. And so the day went on with eating, chatting, playing, bursting crackers, visiting friends, and did I say eating?  Everybody had a great time. 

Deepavali literally means ‘Row of lamps’. According to tradition (one of many, I should add), Deepavali was the day when Lord Krishna slew Narakasura, a powerful demon. Before dying, Narakasura felt remorse for all the oppression he had inflicted and begged for forgiveness. He also requested that the day of his death should be celebrated by the people with joy and pomp. Hence, we celebrate the day as the festival of lights and sound. As far as kids were concerned, we had a soft corner for Narakasura because he gave us Deepavali and no other festival captured our imagination like Deepavali.

Dark Elixir

As I surveyed the hot liquid in my cup, I felt contented. The coffee that I held in my hand had turned out really well. I had recently purchased some peaberry coffee that seemed to match the Coorg variety closely and had been roasted to the perfect shade of brown. I had then ground up a handful and made the brew in the traditional south Indian filter. Adding hot milk to this resulted in the highly satisfying collaboration that was as close to the classic Chennai filter coffee as I could get and sent me down memory lane.

When I was young, some days I would be up early and get to watch my mother make coffee. Brewing coffee demanded a careful and exacting process. She would first pass the top half of the filter a couple of times over the open flame to ensure that the pores were not clogged. After that, she would place the required measure of coffee powder into the filter and compact it lightly with her fingers. This will be covered by the loose plunger over the powder to hold it in place. Then she would boil water and add the boiling water to the filter ever so gently using a ladle. After that, you had to wait for the decoction to drip down to the bottom half of the filter. During this time, she would put the milk on the stove to boil and continue with her regular morning routine of singing bhajans or other songs. Coffee was strictly for the grown-ups then and I did not get to taste it till a few years later. But I used to be fascinated by the coffee-making process and was content to sit and watch. And I still recall some of the songs mother used to sing.

Getting the beans roasted and ground at the local coffee store was itself a thrilling experience. Which young boy will not be thrilled by the big commercial roasters and grinders at the store! The whir, the heat and the aroma in these places is simply enchanting. I can remember carrying freshly ground coffee, packed in non-porous wax paper bag and still warm, back home after purchasing it from one of these shops.

There was a time when we lived in the foothills of the Western Ghats where we could buy the beans pretty much off the plantation. We used to roast them at home using a drum-shaped roaster that had to be turned by hand over a coal fire. The whole house smelled like a coffee shop then. We also had a hand mill to grind the roast. When you combined the brew from this process with fresh milk heated to the right temperature, you could count on a heavenly cup of coffee.

Coffee does not have the long history of tea, but it has certainly captured the world market despite its relatively recent entrance. It seems that we owe the discovery of coffee to some enterprising goatherds in Ethiopia several centuries ago. Upon noticing an unusual perkiness in their goats, they deduced that it arose from ingesting the berries of a certain bush. This itself is an amazing feat, considering that goats will eat almost anything. They then decided that what was good for the goats was good for the (adventurous) goatherds. To cut a long story short, it was a small bite for a goat but a giant gulp for mankind.

Tea was introduced into India by the British, but coffee came before that. The story of its arrival in India and subsequent cultivation sounds like 'Jack and the Beanstalk'. It is said that a pilgrim named Baba Budan smuggled seven coffee beans out of Yemen after falling for the coffee he tasted there. Yes, he had to smuggle the seeds because the Arabs, who controlled the coffee market then, did not allow the export of seeds. It was perhaps a strange thing to do after a pilgrimage, but I think he had the right idea. Anyway, he planted the seeds in the hills of Karnataka and the rest is history.

When I first came to America, I was in for a rude shock. I just was not ready for drip coffee. The only kind of coffee I drank then was good, South Indian, well, I should just say Indian filter coffee, since there is no North Indian filter coffee. The drip coffee was served with a white powder (non-dairy creamer) which never seemed to dissolve well. Back then, you did not have the now ubiquitous Starbucks and other coffee shops. Drip coffee was pretty much all you got. I used to marvel at those who drank it black. And even more at those who drank decaffeinated coffee with non-dairy creamer and artificial sweetener. I mean, at that point, could you even call it coffee?

Anyway, my first taste of drip coffee was pretty bad. I might have given up on it altogether but then I tried tea the next time. It was far worse and could only be placed, I imagine, slightly above dish water. Teabags that have been sitting open to the elements, with tepid water to steep them in, are an insult to serious tea drinkers. So I gave up on drinking tea in restaurants entirely and decided to give the local coffee brew another try. I must admit that I was able to get used to it slowly, especially with actual milk or half-and-half. It took some time before I was able to appreciate coffee in different formats.

Fortunately, America has had a coffee explosion in the last twenty or so years. Myriads of hot and cold coffees of various gourmet varieties are now available practically at every corner. One can get one's coffee made to specifications, whether 'one-shot, low-fat, non-foam latte' or 'non-fat, double-shot, low-foam mocha'. But my favorite still remains the filter coffee of my erstwhile home. I end with this link to an article, Meter Long Coffee, which I think is a fine tribute to that dark elixir that I miss very much.

(Photo courtesy: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Filter_kaapi.JPG)

The Arrow of Time

But thought's the slave of life, and life time's fool;
And time, that takes survey of all the world,
Must have a stop.                        - Shakespeare, Henry IV

Statements like 'Time flies' and 'Time and tide wait for no man' indicate the inevitable passing of time. But it is actually quite difficult to define what time is. Whether it is part of the basic structure of the universe or an artificial construct of the mind is a matter of debate among philosophers and scientists. Time is not a thing perceivable by our senses though we do recognize the passage of time. It is true that time passes automatically, but we have to be made aware of its passing. If not, what does it matter how it passes? How could the idea of time come about without our being aware of it? Wouldn't we just have 'now' and no yesterdays or tomorrows?

Leaving philosophical questions aside, our experience of time is a curious thing. For instance, when I wake up from a deep sleep, I have no idea of how much time has passed. I have to look at the clock to find out how long I have slept. Strangely, even when I am totally engrossed in something very interesting, I lose track of time. Until my attention moves away from whatever I am doing, whether sleeping or fully focused on something, I do not note the passage of time. Conversely, if I am not doing anything of interest, I am constantly checking the clock to see how much time has passed. When I am thus conscious of the passage of time (which really means I am not doing anything), it seems to be passing very slowly indeed. Time seems to hang in my hands. In fact, I am passing time by watching it pass! Or to use a common phrase, I am just killing time. But can we really kill time? Isn't it just the other way around?

We measure many things against time. This means that we also need to measure time. We rely on man-made instruments to measure time precisely since we cannot keep track of it otherwise. We have all seen spy movies where people synchronize their watches while engaging in a mission because the timing of various actions is critical. For example, in 'A Shot in the Dark', Inspector Clouseau tells his assistant to turn off the main switch in exactly five minutes in one scene. When they try to synchronize their watches they discover that the assistant's watch has stopped working. The poor fellow is then left to count three hundred seconds before throwing the switch.

We often talk of the arrow of time, but the arrow of time does not seem to travel in a straight line most of the time. When I am listening to a terribly boring lecture, it moves slowly in a wave-like fashion. Anyway, that is how I see it.

When I am fully absorbed in some activity, it seems to be jumping from point to point (maybe in a straight line, who knows). I am only aware of the start and end times.

Then there are times when I think time takes a short cut and goes through a sort of wormhole. For example, in the mornings, reluctant to get up, I barely shut my eyes for a minute, but some forty-five minutes have passed when I open them again. From all this, you can see that the mind has its own concept of how fast or slow time should pass! Time does seem to be a construct of the human mind after all.

When we dream, something strange happens to time. The dream time moves much faster relative to time in the waking state. We can go though years of dream time in a matter of minutes. We can readily see from this that time is not absolute. How does time flow in a dream? Who makes it all happen? It is awe-inspiring to think that my mind can create the whole dream universe - space, time and all. I wonder if, in our waking state too, time is created by the mind, perhaps a super-mind.

Since the passage of time is not experienced uniformly by everyone, we need clocks to synchronize time. We have become slaves to time and we dance to the schedule dictated by the clock. We get up at a certain time and go to work or to any appointment based on the agreed clock. The more organized we are, the more the level of slavery. I have seen folks waiting for a bus on a country road for an hour or more without a trace of impatience. If I asked them when the next bus was coming and they would just say 'In a little while', which could be anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and a half! But in big towns the story is very different. There is a mad rush for everything and waiting is unacceptable.

Everyone wants to save time, but few seem to know how to utilize it wisely. Here’s a story I read long back that may illustrate my point. A man started to get into a local subway train in New York, when his companion pointed out that they could save twenty minutes by taking an express and so they took the express. When they got off at Central Park, upon coming out of the station, he proceeded to sit on a park bench. When asked what he was doing, he replied, “Since we have saved twenty minutes, I think we can enjoy that time here in the park”.

The Washerman's Visit

Ironing clothes is one of the chores I detest. I miss the convenience of the 'Isthriwallah' coming to the door, collecting my shirts, pants and such and then bringing them back neatly pressed. It looks like these iron men may be a vanishing tribe even in India from what I saw on my last visit. The little carts with the charcoal-filled iron box and piles of clothes seemed few and far in between. The few that were around seemed too busy and it took days to get the clothes back.

I remember the time when the washerman used to come by the house to collect dirty clothes. Back then, my father (and men in general) wore only whites - white shirts and white trousers to work, white dhotis and white shirts for social occasions and white dhoti and white angavastram (a matching piece worn over the upper body) at home. Colour was seen only on the narrow border of the dhoti. Obviously, it was very important to maintain the clothes clean and sparkling white. The very process of professionally cleaning clothes is called 'வெளுத்தல்' (veLutthal) in Tamil meaning, 'whitening'. While everyday clothes were washed at home, others had to be sent out to the cleaner except it was the cleaner who came by and collected them.

The washerman's periodic visits were something of a ritual. He would first sort the pile of clothes and then count them. 'Four shirts', he would call out and my father would note down 'Shirts - 4' in the notebook that was dedicated to the purpose of laundry accounting. Then, 'Five dhotis', and so on went the washerman as the rest of the clothes were sorted and counted. Finally, he would count them all together once again and announce the total number of items. This batch total would be cross-checked by adding the individual item counts in the list. Once the totals matched, he would tie all the clothes up in one of the dhotis and take them away (he usually had a donkey-drawn cart for this purpose). Curiously, as far as I can remember, he did not make a copy of the list for his reference.

When I was old enough, I would sometimes have the responsibility to take down the list and I used to feel important doing it. At first, I wondered how the cleaner kept the clothes from different houses from getting mixed up. Then I discovered that he marked, using indelible ink, each item of clothing (in an unobtrusive location like the inside of the collar) with the initials of the head of the house. But still it was quite a task to wash a mountain of clothes, sort them and bring them back to the right houses. The cleaner got it right most of the time, though occasionally there were mix-ups. When the clothes were delivered, they were checked against the list in the notebook and the charges tallied. The cleaner then got paid for his work. The clothes would take their appointed place in the cupboard where they were neatly stacked.

The clothes were washed at some public tank or in the river. I think there were places dedicated for this purpose. Even today, names like 'dhobi ghat', 'dhobi talao' and 'vannarpettai' stand testament to this. (I understand that many are still active - the one in Mumbai holds a world record for 'World's Largest Outdoor Laundry'). You could see whole lot of clothes being line dried in these locations, like wisps of white cloud, fluttering in the breeze. I have no idea what soaps were used or how the clothes were whitened. But they came back looking very crisp and sparkling with just the right amount of starch where needed. It was very hard work of course, as no washing machines were used.

By the late sixties, the cleaners were becoming hard to find. You now had 'Dry Cleaners' here and there but the traditional ones were disappearing. I guess the income was too meagre and the next generation was seeking and finding more lucrative professions. It became increasingly hard to maintain the cotton shirts and trousers that my father wore to work and so, reluctantly, he made the switch to polyester ones which could be washed at home quite easily and required no pressing. But dhotis still presented a problem.

It seems that washing the cotton hand loom dhotis properly is an art form that the modern launderers were not trained in. The dhotis often come back starched stiff and worse, looking bluish instead of white. Polyester dhotis (ugh!) made an entry into the market, perhaps, as a response to this problem. Luckily, they have not succeeded in edging out the traditional hand loom ones. On the contrary, much to my delight, I still see huge showrooms dedicated to the comfortable soft white cotton dhotis of which I pick up a few on my visits to India. I am quite content to wash them in the machine, but I avoid using the dryer. The twisted and wrinkled mess resulting from a turn in the dryer will be an impossible challenge for the most advanced 'Iron Man'. And, as I already told you, I hate ironing.