If you send out your laundry in Mumbai, it comes here to mingle with the other pants and sheets in hot sudsy water before it is beaten on a flogging stone, dipped in hot starch, and hung out to dry.
Over 200 Dhobi (washermen) families run this particular facility. It’s a hereditary position and one of the lowest in the caste system (not as low as a toilet cleaner, but pretty low) . If your dad’s an Indian laundry man, you will be an Indian laundry man too. It also means you are not supposed to touch anyone of a higher caste. But at least you’ll have some muscles.
Makes you wonder if we really need Downy balls, dryer sheets, Tide pens, Woolite, Purex sheets, or non-chlorine bleach to make colors brighter and whites whiter. I mean, I don’t think anyone’s ever said, “I like India but, man, the clothes people wear sure are stained and dull.”