Sau rupaiyya tour to see how city washes dirty linen in public

Rather than gaze at Mahalaxmi's open-air dhobi ghat from a distant bridge, we suggest you head down and let an engineer who doubles as a guide tell you about lawyer-dhobis and their brush with Mallika Sherawat

This Women's Day, the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, published an article titled, The Washing Machine and the Liberation of Womenu00a0Put in the Detergent, Close the Lid and Relax. The piece suggested that the washing machine is the one gadget that did more to liberate women than any feminist movement or scientific discovery.

What we are wondering then, is why busloads of foreign tourists stop over on the Mahalaxmi Bridge to peer down at washermen going about their daily routine. The Mahalaxmi racecourse, with its manicured lawns, is just across the road, but that's not half as interesting.

From the bridge, dhobighat looks like a massive, chequered ghetto-sprawl with dhobis thrashing clothes in the 5x8 feet cement structures. But to make sense of the chaos, you have to get your feet dirty. And the guy to help you do that is Samir Malim. An engineer who lives nearby, Salim often doubles as a guide.

Number crunching:

"I don't know the area that dhobighat covers, but there are 826 washing posts, measuring 5x8 feet each. So, you do the math," he shrugs. That's 33,040 sq. ft. dedicated to washing Mumbai's dirty linen. And this doesn't even include the drying area. The bhatti is the other nodal point where clothes are sterilised by churning them in boiling water. The area employs more than 8,000 dhobis, and many of them are graduates. One of them is a lawyer, Samir reveals proudly.

The dhobis suggest you climb down the bridge for a closer look. "Jo log humko bridge se dekhte hain, unko lagta hai ki hum gande paani mein kapde dhote hain. Magar aisa nahin hai (People who see us working from the bridge can only see dirty, soapy water accumulated in the gutters. But we wash our clothes in clean flowing water)," clarifies dhobi Sudhir Kumar.

Every dhobi has to pay a rent of Rs 299 a month to the BMC. Each one washes a minimum of 500 clothes a day, depending on his client base that can vary from individual households to hotels, hospitals and garment houses. At the end of the day, it's all about money. A shirt costs Rs 5 to clean, a bedsheet, Rs 10.

Why firangs throng here:

Dhobighat presents a slice of the city's hectic life. "It tells a whole different story of Mumbai, where labour is still cheap and you can afford to get your clothes hand-washed," says Busk Helge, a tourist from Denmark.