Full Service Culture
By popular demand, I am reprinting my travel journals from India for the winter of 2004-5.
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Oh man, people work in India. Oh the work they do. Every kind of work imaginable. Every kind of work unimaginable. The list is staggering, the duties daunting. Wallah, which by itself means man, is a guy who is your personal customer representative and service provider for anything under the sun. In the morning around 11, my dhobi-wallah, or laundry guy, comes and picks up my laundry from my hotel room. And takes it down to the laundry facilities in the basement, you think? Oh no– far from it. This man takes my sweaty togs and lugs it with other countless kilos of clothes to a designated area called a dhobi ghat (ghat in this case is a series of steps by a river) and POUNDS THE DIRT OUT OF CLOTHES until they are spotlessly clean. He brings them back to me at the end of the long day, sometimes as late as 11pm, and delivers them to me with a smile, all neatly folded and fresh smelling. The cost for each article of clothes is 20 cents. I give him a twenty cent tip and he smiles warmly. I figure he doesn’t get a tip most of the time. He’s in the middle of his deliveries, but he’ll back tomorrow at the same time with a smile on his face.
In the afternoon, my Chai-wallah comes by. He is an elderly man who everybody calls boy. That’s just what you do with chai-wallahs, no matter what their age. He carries his portable chai brewing and dispensing machine. That’s what he does all day. Days in Mumbai are hot as hell even now, in the cool season. We are about 10 feet above sea level, so you can imagine the enveloping humidity. I’m prostrate on the bed from near heat stroke at 3pm, , and what is this seventy year-old doing? Serving delicious tea to the masses, like a blessing. The cost? Ten cents. I usually give him five cents more, and he thanks me profusely.
Now, not to give you a wrong impression of all people here. There are the doctors, playwrights, movies stars, Bollywood producers, high tech entrepreneurs, heads of state, and the nouveau rich. They all have plenty of money and I’m just a scruffy big dude with a great exchange rate.
But the Firang in India sees many people doing hard things, some people doing ugly things, even more people not able to do anything. Part of me would like to do something.
I’ll figure out how to help in some way while I’m here. In the meantime, I’m gonna write the ultimate country- western ode to the workin’ wallah when I get home.
shucks.