Washed Out!

It has been over a decade since we had bought our semi automatic-5 KG capacity-TVS washing machine. Now that TVS has ceased to be a brand of washing machine years ago, you can all guess how ancient the brand and the machine itself would be. Yeah… there would be many of us who’d have a decade old machine lying in some forgotten corner of our homes , but the rishta we had with ours is an amazing one. Its rich portfolio of experience is more varied than that of an all subject professor in the IITs, for, it has seen my bhai’s shirt size grow from size S to XXL and has washed, rinsed and tumble dried stuff other than merely (soiled) clothes... stuff including Indian currency, mid term answer sheets, chewing gums (which after a wash look like shrunk Spider man suits), grocery lists, safety pins, and stuff that I would not want to mention in a page available for public perusal.

And to say the least, it has had some frightening episodes of washing overdoses with heaps of dirty clothes being stuffed into its esophagus, the poor chunk of metal crying ‘For the sake of Surf Gods, have some mercy on me!’ So that’s how it ceased being merely a machine and coined was the term ‘Washing Macha’ (Macha would be like being called ‘boss’ in B'lore in or ‘yar’ in Dilli or ‘bhai’ in Bihar)

Off late, our Macha had started showing signs of senility. To state it simply, it all started when one fine day, the water draining function refused to uhm... drain the water. Once that was sorted out, the tumble dry refused to work. Baat yahan tak pahuch chuki thi ki the machine grunted a vehement NO and came to a halt every time we switched on the ‘spin dry’ function. Till now, the poor thing has had more than three bypass surgeries and closely indecent number of replacement of its parts.

We knew its time had come when it started emitting painful moans and groans while washing the clothes, the wash tub behaving as if it were a dying hero support in a 1970 hindi movie saying “mere behen ka dhyan rakhna, meri andhi ma ko mera pranam kehna…”. As for the tumble dry… it thundered and jolted the machine so badly that it seemed if only there was a runway, our W. Macha would have taken off smoothly into the sky in another few minutes.

Basically, the moot point of bringing all this drama up here is to state that ULTIMATELY, we bade our 14 year old Macha a tearless farewell last Thursday and brought home a new washing machine. HEH. A sturdy, silver colored-fully automatic-5 KG-front loading-IFB washing machine that now sits in our balcony inside a carton that is yet to be opened.

Say. Now the sad story of our lives is that till now, no technician from the company has reported to us for an 'installation and a demo session’. Reason: On Friday, our guys were celebrating their independence, on Saturday, all the sisters were busy tying rakhis to their brothers and all the brothers were busy getting rakhis tied by their sisters while ogling at the others’ sisters. Aur Sunday ko to wese bhi off hoti he na Macha!!

At the risk of sounding defensive, I should say im not a technologically challenged being. But any day, I would prefer a demo to operate a fully auto machine.. something that I have just seen being operated at my mama’s place and never bothered to observe the same.

So for the past four days Ma and I have been the likes of Hema, Prema, Jaya and Sushma. No. We have not signed any film with the Sippy family, I was trying to allude to a very famous brand of washing powder. One in which a little girl does a tutu act and a couple of neatly dressed middle class sisters go cha-cha-cha while washing clothes... and the background music goes like….

Hemaaaa… Premaaaa… Jaya aur Sushma,
Sabki pasand Nirmaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Chorus: Washing powder Nirma..
Nirma!

Wonder how they manage to smile all the way though...