THE DHOBI-WALLAH
I can just about remember Mondays being washing day at home in County Antrim, with Mummy being too tired to take me for a walk after hours at the sink. But RAF Poona is well served by the dhobi-wallahs who frequently call to offer their services. With so many identical uniform garments, Mummy shows me how each customer has their own special mark, placed inside each garment using a special black pen which won't come off. Our mark looks like the letter :X: with two dots on each side.
Next day we visit the dhobi-ghat, which Mummy says would be called a laundry at home. The clothing arrives in big baskets, and is tipped into a huge tank of hot water heated by a fire beneath. I watch as the dhobi-wallahs and their wives lift out the garments and beat them against a big flat stone, rubbing dirty patches with another stone dipped in soapy water. After a rinse, the rows of khaki shirts, shorts and tunics, sheets and pillowcases are laid out on stones to dry in the sun, before being dipped into something called starch and pressed flat until they resemble sheets of cardboard. My shirt and shorts come back so stiff that they rub my skin red, so Mummy tells the dhobi-wallah not to starch them. When off duty Daddy and Sgt James next door wear a dhoti, which is a big skirt like Mummy's and looks very funny and I laugh until Daddy says he'll tell the dhobi-wallah to starch my shorts again and see how I like that.
Suitably impressed after our visit, I inspect Daddy's uniform trousers and am concerned that our dhobi mark is missing. It would never do to have them go astray, so I find the special pen that Mummy showed me and make a passable if shaky copy upon the left leg. I'm not too good on measurements yet so it's about six inches high. There, I think, now the dhobi-wallah will easily find Daddy's trousers.
But when he gets home Daddy is very cross, he says I have ruined his Number Two slacks and sends me off to bed, where I sit disconsolately on my charpoy. Yoo ********* ****, I say to myself, there's no pleasing some people.
Next instalment: Geriaviator (aged 5) continues his memories of RAF Poona 1946 with the arrival of the Indian monsoon.