Maundering about Laundering

So, I am mucking around trying to find something to write about, and someone sends me a prompt about laundering men (actually, non-laundering men). I gear up to write about how highly intelligent men were putting in all their skills in the socially productive act of laundering (well - money-laundering, actually. We, humans, have this extraordinary quality of irony - how else would be end up naming a dirty job with the words used to describe a cleaning job?) when I run my eye over the rules, which say that this is only for women! Obviously, I feel the irresistible impulse to strike a blow for the equality of men.

Getting these impulses is all right but the difficulty lies in the fact that, being single, I do my own everything - including laundry - and, thus, there are really no issues with women at home. Wait a minute! Maybe not now, but were there not a few in the distant past when my sister came to live with me in Delhi? In the days when either washing machines were only for the rich or when I was not rich enough for washing machines? Of course!

It was not like laundering was not a chore before my sis landed in Delhi. In winters, I could get along happily without enduring the touch of detergent and water since clothes only got pleasantly warmer as they accumulated...layers, shall we say? So what if everyone around me walked around with wrinkled noses and quite a few made gagging noises as well? Summers, though, were a bit of a problem. I did not really mind the fact that my shirt acquired multiple designs - especially around the armpits and the front - but there was this small issue of my skin reacting to the modifications in the textiles with rashes in mention-able and unmentionable places. Ergo - every now and then, I needed to sully my hands with detergent and water.

Please do not think that the coming of my sis made any difference in this matter. When washing machines were not around, the timing of laundering your clothes need not necessarily be tied up with the timing of laundering mine. So, I was left to my own devices and things were much the same as before. AND, you do not need to emit those disbelieving noises. I know - your wives would not let you go around in disheveled rags but you forget this small point. Brothers are considered acts of God sent down to test women's souls and, thus, they can only be endured. Husbands, on the other hand, are supposed to be acts of choice and, even where the match happens to have been made in Heaven (or, more to the point, made by the consensus of a large extended family), they are put down on earth for wives to mold. So, your experience as a husband cannot be used to negate my experience as a brother.

That did not mean that I got off unscathed.  One of the peculiar things about women is their obsessive need for curtains. If there be a minuscule hole allowing a mite to pass through, it had to be marked by the presence of a curtain before it. I may have got along without them for years but, almost as soon as my sis landed, the house sprouted curtains all over the place like a tropical evergreen forest gone berserk.

So what, you say? You must be a single child and, as yet, unmarried. Curtains, apparently, need to be laundered periodically. In my innocence, I agreed to do the laundering of all the common textiles. A month down the line, this ensued.

"When are you going to wash the curtains?"
I looked at them. They seemed practically new to me.
"Why? They are still that nice off-white and the flowers are still grey-blue."
"The curtains are supposed to be white AND the flowers blue."
"Off-white is a nice color too and grey blue suits the flowers."
"Nonsense! THAT is a layer of dirt on it, not dye."

THIS is the problem. Ideas of what is practically new seem to differ VERY widely between men and women.

"AND how about the bed-spreads and blankets?"

Ye Gods! What was THIS? I never knew that these things had to be washed. My modus operandi had been, hitherto, to use them till they developed holes and, then, buy the next lot.

"So, are you washing them today?"
"If you leave the responsibility to me for washing these things, then I must also have the authority to decide WHEN they get washed. You cannot retain the authority and leave only the responsibility to me."

There are times - very few, yes, but still - when men can win arguments with women. Those times are normally when women need to get something done by you, and you can win the argument merely by monumental inertia. You do not get off lightly, though. But you do have the solace of having won the argument as you wake up in the morning to find that there is no milk for your cuppa or come back home, and wait outside a locked door, because the woman of the house has decided to go shopping at your customary time to return home from office.

One week more and again...

"So when are you washing the curtains?"

I look at them. They do seem new, still. The one in the bedroom had also acquired some new decoration in a rather attractive brown - splatters like some cubist painting, in which the artistically inclined would find deep meanings.

"They are looking nice still. That lovely brown design, in particular..."
"That is when the coffee went up your nose thanks to your reading Wodehouse while you drank it."
"Really? They look good anyway and, even if they do not, who is to see it? It is in the bedroom after all."

Suffice to say that, by the end of that month, my sis took over the washing. I have to admit that the house looked nicer, but the difference between nice and nasty really did not seem worth all THAT effort.

I really am not to blame for this, you know. After all, I would have washed them at MY frequency. If she wanted them washed at HER frequency, is it my fault?

So what if my frequency would have been once a decade?