By Sujatha Subramanian, Winner of Onlooker story contest, 1964

ONE can travel far and wide throughout this country and find amongst the diversity of languages and creeds of India one thing which is common to all—the erring dhobi. Ours is no exception. In fact, I personally feel that our dhobi is a leader among dhobis—a veritable connoisseur in the art of turpitude. Be it a grandmother’s funeral or a nephew’s christening, the way he unfolds the tale with all its ramifications holds me spell-bound. From the childhood of his favorite sister to her confinement, or the advent of sickness of his dear grandmother to the list of mourners, the mastery he displays in relating these personal details tides over the critical moment and he vanishes with another bundle of soiled clothes leaving behind a pile of washed clothes with a shirt missing or perhaps a torn bed sheet.

His piece de resistance is usually a funeral. He seems to have more grandmothers than he knows what to do with and keeps bumping them off systematically. Once in every two months he comes round with his tale of woe—a grand-mother’s funeral. The list of diseases he has at his fingertips with elaborate descriptions of their symptoms would certainly astonish any doctor. Naturally, he always plays a major part in the whole affair. From what he says one would imagine he had spent every minute of the last fortnight at the sick-bed. This of course leaves me no chance to ask him why he has come round on the last Sunday of the month instead of the first.

It was the last straw as far as I was concerned when I found that I was listening to various accounts of the deaths of seven grandmothers, three wives, five mothers-in-law and some uncles and cousins. As a resolution for the New Year I told myself that I must put an end to his bare-faced lying. Dismissal would hardly serve the’ purpose for he would certainly start trying his tricks on some other guileless woman. So I sat down and made a list of all the tales he had told me. Armed with this formidable evidence, I faced him when he came round next. Be-fore he had a chance to open out I collared him with MY list. “Now look, this farce cannot go on any more. Your stories are all quite interesting no doubt, but I refuse to swallow them any longer. In the past few months you have attended the funerals of seven grand-mothers! They have variously died of cholera, epilepsy, small-pox, typhoid, plague, dysentery and consumption.”

He sighed and raised his hands to heaven. “May the Gods be with you.  Madam, you have forgotten the eighth grandmother. She died of cancer.”