This is the way we washed our clothes – The conclusion

So now you get a rough-ish idea why Fisher, Schaffer, Briggs and Co. hold such an important place in my heart.

For those coming in late and have missed out the first hilarious part, please buy tickets read it for free here.

As I was saying, thanks to the above names, we got our first washing machine when my parents shifted to their own home in Ambalpady.

After extensive research and asking around we finally zeroed in on a well known brand which had a history of contented customers. The day it was installed was a red letter day. For me at least. I hovered around the technician who had come to set it up, getting in his way and asking pertinent and intelligent questions which made that poor man perspire profusely under his collar. Finally, to get rid of me, he shoved the instruction manual under my nose and I retired to a corner and studied it like I was preparing for the JEE entrance exam.

Once the contraption was set up, the good Lord alone knows how enthusiastically I went about washing clothes, blankets, curtains… Everyone stayed clear when I was in washing mode. Just in case, you know!

That was some machine!. It went to work with reassuring clicks and whirrs, swirled and swished around busily, and to show that it meant business, when it reached the final spin-dry stage, the whole process would be accompanied by a thunderous sound. A T.H.U.N.D.E.R.O.U.S sound. Nothing else can better describe the sound that washing machine made, I tell you!

For 14 long minutes, it roared and thundered and clanged like the devil was trapped in it.

The first time it did that, we rushed over to check it out. After the 2nd and 3rd time we called in the technician. He was pretty casual about it. “Didn’t they inform you at the show room while purchasing it?” he asked. “It’s normal.”

We didn’t think it was normal. Nor did the neighbors. Can’t blame them. For 14 minutes every morning, with a sound like that in an otherwise quiet neighborhood… the possibilities were endless. So was the imagination of the neighbors. They wondered if we had set up a clandestine factory in our back yard. A professional laundry service? A money laundering machine? A brewery? The last option was a hot favorite. We were ‘Goa returned’ after all! On hindsight I now wonder if the number of visitors who would drop by came hoping for a glass of freshly distilled Feni! Brewed in the good doctor’s backyard no less.

Whatever it may have been, after a few years our washing machine certainly behaved like it had tipped the bottle, bottoms up.

It was perfectly alright to begin with mind you. It went about its business and we went about ours. The minute the knob clicked to ‘spin dry’, the machine would act up. That thing, believe me, seemed to have a life of it’s own.

It hopped and skipped and jumped around like a kangaroo in the wild Australian bush. Accompanied by that noise like thunder of course. The day we found it had jumped from its original place and had reached the back door, we called in the technician.

His initial diagnosis – “some levelling issue” – turning out to be a wrong one, and the guy came back again. And again. And again.

That technician came and went so many times during the lifetime of that washing machine that he almost became a part of the family.

Fortunately, before he could take up residence with us, thus getting an opportunity to lay a claim to the property and the family jewels our wonderful washing machine drowned in its own noise and breathed its last.

It’s replacement – the latest model – is in comparison a pale come-down from its predecessor. No excitement. Nothing to write home about.

It’s certainly not getting featured in my blog for sure!

THE END!

I’m taking my blog to the next level with #MyFriendAlexa courtesy Blogchatter, the wonderful online blogging community.

This is my 7th post in the campaign.