Ironing clothes is one chore with which I have a love hate relationship. I absolutely cannot wear clothes without ironing them and unlike other mundane chores, I cannot bring myself to even a modicum of liking it. So, except for a few short years, when I was in India and earning to justify paying for the ironing, I have had to take a deep breath and do the ironing after days of procrastination.
It all started when I was in std 4. Till then my sister used to iron our school dress. We did not go out a lot except to play and so school dress was the only ironing. My elder sister always believed in making the younger sister do the chore and when I was in IVth and she in Xth, she decided I was old enough to take over that chore (not having a mother means you start doing a lot of things very early in life - I was even cooking in IVth - I was 9 years old then).
For a while things were fine and then they blew up in the Std VIII to X phase (12-15 years). I lived at my uncle's place during this time. I was not very comfortable with the new school where I was the outsider. Maybe it was my hatred of the new school, new uniform (salwar kurta dupatta) or maybe the iron was just bad - I can attribute it to any reason but the end result was that I ended up burning a lot of my school clothes. And it was always the school stuff (it was part of a phase where I had to wear ironed underclothes too). Most frequently it would be the sleeve of the kurta since it is the first part to be ironed. All this burning must have frustrated my dad who did not have a lot of money to start with and was always a very careful person. So, he said that instead of getting a whole new kurta, I would just have the sleeves changed. Till today I am not sure if he was really serious. The color of new sleeves would never match the color of a much washed 'rest of the kurta'. I begged, pleaded, tantrumed,made people intervene on my behalf until he finally relented. And this cycle repeated every time I burnt my kurta (which happened too frequently for comfort).
One of the things I most miss about leaving India is having to do my ironing again. The whole pleasure of the iron wala coming to your house to pick up clothes, ironing them (better than I did) and then delivering them holds more value than shopping in big malls with wide aisles will ever have. And in spite of what my husband says, it is NOT possible to buy only wrinkle free clothes (though you do get a lot of them here).
Tail Piece: One of my favorite comfort memories is ironing my dad's and uncle's clothes. But I do have one outstandingly hilarious anecdote. My cousin brother had joined me in that hateful school I mentioned above (though I made a couple of good friendships there) and he is a very careless guy. Once he realised that he had to wear a particular pair of trousers the next day and had to wash them in a hurry at night. Unfortunately, they were still quite wet in the morning (our bus used to come at 5.30) and he tried to dry the waistband on the gas flame! Of course, it caught fire and he had to carefully hide the singe beneath the belt and pull out his shirt a little bit. Even today, that incident gives my splits.
Life is lot of fun when you have very little parental supervision from a young age!
It all started when I was in std 4. Till then my sister used to iron our school dress. We did not go out a lot except to play and so school dress was the only ironing. My elder sister always believed in making the younger sister do the chore and when I was in IVth and she in Xth, she decided I was old enough to take over that chore (not having a mother means you start doing a lot of things very early in life - I was even cooking in IVth - I was 9 years old then).
For a while things were fine and then they blew up in the Std VIII to X phase (12-15 years). I lived at my uncle's place during this time. I was not very comfortable with the new school where I was the outsider. Maybe it was my hatred of the new school, new uniform (salwar kurta dupatta) or maybe the iron was just bad - I can attribute it to any reason but the end result was that I ended up burning a lot of my school clothes. And it was always the school stuff (it was part of a phase where I had to wear ironed underclothes too). Most frequently it would be the sleeve of the kurta since it is the first part to be ironed. All this burning must have frustrated my dad who did not have a lot of money to start with and was always a very careful person. So, he said that instead of getting a whole new kurta, I would just have the sleeves changed. Till today I am not sure if he was really serious. The color of new sleeves would never match the color of a much washed 'rest of the kurta'. I begged, pleaded, tantrumed,made people intervene on my behalf until he finally relented. And this cycle repeated every time I burnt my kurta (which happened too frequently for comfort).
One of the things I most miss about leaving India is having to do my ironing again. The whole pleasure of the iron wala coming to your house to pick up clothes, ironing them (better than I did) and then delivering them holds more value than shopping in big malls with wide aisles will ever have. And in spite of what my husband says, it is NOT possible to buy only wrinkle free clothes (though you do get a lot of them here).
Tail Piece: One of my favorite comfort memories is ironing my dad's and uncle's clothes. But I do have one outstandingly hilarious anecdote. My cousin brother had joined me in that hateful school I mentioned above (though I made a couple of good friendships there) and he is a very careless guy. Once he realised that he had to wear a particular pair of trousers the next day and had to wash them in a hurry at night. Unfortunately, they were still quite wet in the morning (our bus used to come at 5.30) and he tried to dry the waistband on the gas flame! Of course, it caught fire and he had to carefully hide the singe beneath the belt and pull out his shirt a little bit. Even today, that incident gives my splits.
Life is lot of fun when you have very little parental supervision from a young age!
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