HOW I LEARNT TO LOVE MY LAUNDRY

Back in my time, the growing years of a girl entailed being a part of household chores as a practice. (Since this is not a gender-bender piece, I wouldn’t stray into the boy-girl debate in domestic settings and would stay close to the story I want to tell.)

In my house, it was purely a part of helping mom with her never-ending duties. Little things like wiping rinsed utensils dry and putting them in the cupboard, pulling laundry off the cloth line and folding it, occasionally sweeping the floor when the maid didn’t turn up used to fall on me. And truth be told, I hated every minute of it, although it called for very little time and effort. It vexed the lazy bones in me and I pulled a long face every time I got an instruction to get on the jobs. A long face - it was as far as I could go to show resistance. Mom would brook nothing more.

Life got much easier with time and automation, but certain chores still had to be done manually. Folding the laundry for instance. Or ironing. There are some things in life that you just don’t take a natural liking to, and these two tasks might fall under that category. Yet, we do what must be done, grudgingly and under obligation. The tedium of having to do something we detest is immense but having no bail-out option, we find new ways to get around them with our own little tricks and mind games.

For a long time now, I have had Thursdays earmarked for laundry. The clothes are washed and dry by evening, and the load is dumped on the seats in front of the TV. After an afternoon of three back-to-back classes, I slump on the sofa running a cursory glance at the pile waiting for my attention.

There was a time when the very sight would have inspired ire and irritation, but not anymore. My me-time is about to begin. With the TV running in the background, I pull out the clothes, one by one. The first thing that strikes me is how in the 2+ years of work from home, most of our formal clothes have gone into hibernation. I miss the sillage of men’s perfume that used to waft from my husband’s shirt as I inhaled deeply while folding them. Each day it would be a different scent, all selected by me for shared use. I have a special thing for the woodsy masculine fragrances over the floral feminine ones.

Those shirts have now receded to some anonymous territory in the closet. I summon distant memories of the dapper look he wore every morning in his crisp office outfits. Now it is mostly tees and shorts that get repeated a boring number of times and a stubbly, unkempt look befitting a lovelorn hero.

But in the midst of those boring t-shirts, I find the ones that used to be my dad’s. The husband had brought back some tees after dad moved on, as a remembrance. Perhaps, it is for this reason that I allow the repetition. The memories associated with them are too precious to be tossed away, no matter how much the fabric has faded. Till they tear at the seams or bear a hole, they will stay. I find dad’s presence in smallest crevices of my everyday life.

As I fold each garment, I remember a dear friend who first introduced me to the concept of using a fragrant fabric softener many years ago. I first smelled it in her house, got enamoured by it and I have stuck to the same brand and fragrance ever since. ‘Downy’ now reminds me of her. It brings to mind the good times of the past. Life has taken both of us on wild rollercoasters, but the smell of ‘Downy’ is a reminder of how we still are connected in the undercurrents of our lives in tangible ways.

From the pile, I pick a dress that was bought for me by my sister, and I think of her fondly. Her trips to India always included a trial session of the clothes she had lugged for me from the US. I remember the joy in her face when I approved each of the pieces she had selected for me and when I squealed at how well they fitted me. I smile as I fold the synthetic tops filled with genuine sibling love and wonder why people are distanced by spaces so wide that years must pass before you meet and hold them in a tight hug again.

‘Why do you still keep these? Time you discarded them,’ suggests the husband as he walks in, watching me tuck a few frayed dresses into the cupboard. I throw a ‘I know what I am doing’ glance at him and continue stuffing the shelf with my so-done-with daily wear.

What does he know about the comfort of old, softened cotton in these days of scorching sun? They are past retirement - colours have turned white, designs have disappeared, and all that remains intact in them is the weave - but some things can’t be given superannuation because they hold huge value even after they are past their prime. What was starched and stiff once has now become comfy and cool. Things tempered by time cannot be thrown away in a hurry.

Then there are the itsy-bitsy things that we avoid speaking about in public but are integral to our sartorial needs. I call them the ABC’s. They are like hidden emotions that we are loath to express openly but realize their significance and indispensability secretly. The towels are where I linger for a longer while. I wrap them around my hands, put them to my cheek, feel them intensely before I begin to fold them. Not because I have any special love for them.

I have a curious problem. It is when I am in the shower that ideas burst forth in my head. A story, an article, precious thoughts and insights pop up only when I am there, completely powerless to document them. I hope to hold on to the thoughts till I can step out and get to my laptop, but thoughts have their own expiry time. It is as if they get soaped out or mopped up by my towel by the time I make a dash to the computer. How many such stories my towel must have soaked up and rinsed out in the machine, I wonder. My dalliance with the towels are a foolish attempt at reviving the lost ideas from its fibers, in vain.

And then the socks; those mysterious things that go in as pairs into the machine but return in singles! Although the use of socks have reduced with no office to go, they remind me of the times I kept two similar but asymmetrical ones together and an unsuspecting husband wore them as it is to work, and we laughed about it silly when he returned.

‘What difference does it make?’ I would say. ‘Small things.’ Ever since I gave my laundry a generous space in my life, it has become a ceremony that I indulge in with joy and ease. It often takes me down memory lanes, triggers emotions that must have lain untapped for a long time, evokes a sense of calmness and at times even feels meditative.

Perhaps this is one way we could conduct all unsavoury tasks in our daily lives and convert the monotony to something pleasurable and satisfying. The joy, in the end, is not in the task itself, but in the manner in which it is approached and undertaken, yeah? I am working on it in earnest.

SPEAKING OF LONELINESS

Loneliness is a cruel companion.

It accosts those who crave it, initially as sweet solitude, taking time to grow on them and then like a parasite, saps their life energy till they wither and fall.

It arrives in some people’s lives, unsolicited, wearing black robes, in the form of a dear one’s death or desertion, robbing the loves of their lives. Razing their hearts to cinders and purloining their essential joys, loneliness lurks over them like a waiting monsoon cloud, ready to pour anytime.

To some, loneliness becomes a mundane routine, from which they seek nothing and to which they have nothing to offer except deep, long sighs. They neither love nor despise the vacant moments; they merely wade through it, hoping that the river will take them to the ocean soon.

Such different varieties there are of loneliness just as there are of love!

Some stand in a crowd and look around from the recesses of their cloistered self. The crowd has made them insignificant, it has devoured them, it has made them nonexistent. The crowd isn’t them. They aren’t the crowd. Somewhere between these two there are miles that no one can see. How many such lonely souls mope around in the carnival, looking for affinity!

And then there are those loners who wait for a train that would never arrive, and yet come to the station every day and watch the rest of the world go by. They have nowhere to go and nothing to do except fix their stare on the trail of travellers who have destinations to reach. We will see them scattered all over town like lamp posts, if only we would stop and look. In their eyes you see the lyrics of a ballad that echoes their emptiness and in their face the shadows of hidden woes.

I have closely seen the scourge of loneliness in the wrinkled skin of senility. Decades of walking the earth and foraging life have weakened their limbs. They now have only a rocking chair in the corner or a cot to recline with memories of the past to converse with. I have seen their shrinking bodies and dwindling senses withdraw to a silence that is amplified by their uneven breath. Old age and loneliness – what a malicious mixture of agonies it is!

Ask those who are tottering in the lanes of solitude, and they would aver it isn’t a luxury. It is the suffering of the soul that cuts deep. So deep that the wound will bleed even in their grave. The void in their hearts are too large to fill except by an abundance of kindness and love. And such love, alas, is in scarcity. In its absence, the solitary sleepers pretend to celebrate their state, calling their loneliness a cherished possession. And when the world isn’t looking, they secretly weep into their cotton pillows. You who laud the merits of solitude, Speak to those who have their dinners alone and sleep in single couches by the window. Speak to those who return to empty rooms and those who are surrounded by indifferent relations and you will realize – in a mortal world, solitude is not sweet. If lonely people had a recurring dream, what would it be about? Laughter, embraces and kisses? Or the visual of a funeral procession? If they were to hear music in their dreams, will it be a melody or strains of acute melancholy?

If they are asked to make a wish on a falling star, what will they say? ‘Wish we had a hand to hold, a shoulder to cry on, a lap to lay our head and some love to keep us alive’?

As I look out on the city lights, I wonder - how many such lonesome souls will be out there enduring this bitterness in the silence of the nights and in the din of the blazing days? For them, I say an ardent prayer tonight – may there be sunshine and rainbows and the company of glowworms in their lonely lanes.

(Dedicated to all those who are lonely, with or without people in their lives.)

Pic Courtesy : Raman Kutty KV (RK Sir), who taught us at the Dept. of Journalism way back in 91-92. This piece was partly inspired by this photograph and partly by some folks I know.

Quick Scribble

…I am the kind of wanderer who stops to smell the wild flowers on the boughs and feel the moss on the bark

The kind of wanderer Who dips her feet in the stream And tosses droplets in the air

The kind of wanderer who tells the wind, ‘What’s the tearing hurry? Let’s amble down the valley Telling each other stories'…