whirlpool washer, I took you for granted

The village women were laughing at me, and I had to stop. I was soaked. Sweat clung to my back. Soap and water clung to my front. I was trying to wash my clothes the old-fashioned way – in a large basin of detergent water, followed by scouring each piece of clothing on one of the concrete slabs in Shanti Bhavan’s laundry area.

I was the first volunteer to attempt this feat, and now I understood why. It was hard work. Usually, the volunteers wash their clothes by swishing them around in a bucket filled with water and detergent. That is, in the same bucket used for bathing. For this reason, I got in the habit of taking my laundry to my grandparents’ home in Bangalore on the weekends, for a contemporary clean.

This particular afternoon, however, I had decided to give a real wash a try. Bending over the slabs of concrete caused my back to ache. Vigorous scrubbing caused my arms to ache. Blazing beams of sunlight caused my head to ache. It wasn’t a fun time. Moreover, the cleaning ladies from the village that stood next to me were scrubbing away, seemingly without heed. They chatted with me in Kannada, scoffed at my poor technique, and snatched away my clothes to rinse it themselves. One woman handed me my undergarments, informed me that I would be washing these, and they the rest. I stood there for 45 minutes after she had finished washing my enormous pile of clothes, gingerly washing my few pairs of underwear.

I had previously watched small village women who come diurnally to clean our rooms, bathrooms, dishes, and clothes with sympathy: they are my age, poor, thin, and have been married off at an early age, without the opportunity to complete high school. For the most part, I felt pity, as well as relief that I was not in the same boat. Now, however, I view them with a new respect. In a society in which women are deemed “the weaker sex,” they spend eight hours a day performing manual labor, and return to their villages to care for their families (which often include misogynistic, alcoholic husbands). These women might be tiny, malnourished, and uneducated – but there is nothing weak about them.