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The
dhobighat at Mahalaxmi in Mumbai will now find its place on the city’s
tourist map, thanks to the efforts of the Brihanmumbai Municipal
Corporation (BMC). The civic body has finally decided to designate it
as a tourist spot, as it has attracted flocks of tourists thrilled by
the sight and sound of dhobis washing, drying and ironing clothes.
Amitabh Bachchan visited the dhobhighat 30 years ago to make the film Don. And Shahrukh Khan went there in 2005 for his remake of the same film. The Italian film producer Giorgio Garini made an excellent documentary film titled dhobhighat in 2004. The dhobhighat of Mumbai is very much appreciated by foreign tourists, who find the huge ghats, the largest manual laundry in the world, mind- boggling. As one foreign visitor exclaimed, "It’s culturally interesting", to see so much area (seven acres) "devoted to`85 laundry". Here, 4,000 members of the dhobi caste work night and day to guarantee essential service to Mumbai’s 15 million inhabitants. There are 750 washing units and 350 drying zones in the dhobhighat, for each of which the BMC gets as rent of Rs 297 per month. There appears to be no study on the number of clothes washed every day at the dhobighat. One official of the Dhobhi Union, however, said that his men washed at least 1,000 clothes daily on one stone. A stone is a large rock on which clothes are beaten. It is placed in a vat connected with the drainage line. The vat is filled with soapy water. dhobighat has about 750 stones, which work out to 7.5 lakh clothes daily. This is what happens when the residents of Mumbai want the dirty clothes to be washed. No laundry tickets and no computers, yet the clothes are delivered the next day, in perfect condition through an amazingly efficient system employing illiterate workers. Considering the hot, humid weather of Mumbai, if there is one person we need all the time, it is the dhobi. He comes to your home at a designated hour. He then delivers all your clothes back, the next day, as you wear only washed and kadak ironed clothes. But what transpired in those hours that your clothes left your hand, till the time they come back, is a mystery in itself. The clothes go first to the dhobhighat or to the dhobi’s home. Then all the clothes are separated on the basis of their colours. They are then washed, sun dried and ironed to crease perfection. The clothes are then sorted and packed off to the respective homes. And all this is possible due to those little black marks made on the garments at the time of collection. So at the end of a long working day, you don’t have to bother with trivialities like ‘ironing clothes’. It is extremely hard work. Despite the fact that most dhobis are illiterate, they have a highly organised, yet very low-tech method of keeping track of the tons of laundry they clean daily. They are an industrious lot; they do their work, smoking bidis, one ear on the transistor hanging by a nail and softy playing old Hindi film hits. While one man washes the dirty clothes, another irons the day before’s wash, while yesterday’s is flapping dry in the breeze. The ghat is surrounded by filth, overflowing drains and old buildings. Most visitors prefer to watch the ghat from the bridge overlooking the dhobhighat. Invariably when they do come down, they see the filth and leave immediately. But all is not well with this largest dhobhighat in the world. As it is situated in the centre of Mumbai, where the land is very valuable, the dhobhighat area is being taken over by encroachers, who after getting illegal permission from the BMC, have dug their heels in the area, occupying space where the dhobis would put clothes up to dry. The dhobhighat of Mumbai is indigenous. In fact, there is nothing like it anywhere in the world. But go to Mumbai to see it, before landsharks grab it. — MF (Pushpesh Pant is
away on holiday. His column Food Talk will not appear this week.)
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