8. Wearing and lending the clothes of customers.
It is also currently believed that the Dhobi wears the clothes of his customers himself. Thus, ‘The Dhobi looks smart in other people’s clothes’; and ‘Rājāche shiri, Paritāche tiri,’ or ‘The king’s headscarf is the washerman’s loin-cloth.’ On this point Mr. Thurston writes of the Madras washerman: “It is an unpleasant reflection that the Vannāns or washermen add to their income by hiring out the clothes of their customers for funeral parties, who lay them on the path before the pall-bearers, so that they may not step upon the ground. On one occasion a party of Europeans, when out shooting near the village of a hill tribe, met a funeral procession on its way to the burial-ground. The bier was draped in many folds of clean cloth, which one of the party recognised by the initials as one of his bed-sheets. Another identified as his sheet the cloth on which the corpse was lying. He cut off the corner with the initial, and a few days later the sheet was returned by the Dhobi, who pretended ignorance of the mutilation, and gave as an explanation that it must have been done in his absence by one of his assistants.”[9] And Eha describes the same custom in the following amusing manner: “Did you ever open your handkerchief with the suspicion that you had got a duster into your pocket by mistake, till the name of De Souza blazoned on the corner showed you that you were wearing some one else’s property? An accident of this kind reveals a beneficent branch of the Dhobi’s business, one in which he comes to the relief of needy respectability. Suppose yourself (if you can) to be Mr. Lobo, enjoying the position of first violinist in a string band which performs at Parsi weddings and on other festive occasions. Noblesse oblige; you cannot evade the necessity for clean shirt-fronts, ill able as your precarious income may be to meet it. In these circumstances a Dhobi with good connections is what you require. He finds you in shirts of the best quality at so much an evening, and you are saved all risk and outlay of capital; you need keep no clothes except a greenish-black surtout and pants and an effective necktie. In this way the wealth of the rich helps the want of the poor without their feeling it or knowing it—an excellent arrangement. Sometimes, unfortunately, Mr. Lobo has a few clothes of his own, and then, as I have hinted, the Dhobi may exchange them by mistake, for he is uneducated and has much to remember; but if you occasionally suffer in this way you gain in another, for Mr. Lobo’s family are skilful with the needle, and I have sent a torn garment to the wash which returned carefully repaired.”[10]
[1] Folklore of Northern India, vol. ii. p. 8.
[2] Sherring’s Hindu Castes, i. 342–3.
[3] Tribes and Castes, art. Dhobi.
[4] Annals and Antiquities of Rājasthān.
[5] Berār Census Report (1881), p. 155.
[6] Central Provinces Census Report (1891), p. 202.
[7] Loc. cit.
[8] Bihār Peasant Life, s.v. Dhobi.
[9] Ethnographic Notes in Southern India, p. 226.
[10] Behind the Bungalow.