The phone rings as I stand by the ironing board, ready to help a wrinkled shirt out of its misery. I let the hot iron stand in abeyance to attend to this call. It’s a consultant breaking the bad news of my candidature getting rejected. I muster a forced thanks to her for all the help, and put the mobile down. My first instinct is to curse the company for rejecting me. The second is to wallow in misery till dusk. That’s when my attention is drawn back to the gymnastic & slender ironing board, as if it’s telling me the unfairness of being left high & dry.
And I return to my task, asking myself if there could be a better way to crawl out of the bad news. Something inside says, ‘Focus on doing the present work the best you can’. And I take the suggestion. So there flies the shirt for a split second and rests on the plank; water sprinkled from the finger tips dipped in a mug, and the iron begins to work its way through the creases & the wrinkles. You might recommend using a steam iron. Well, speaking from my sample of one, I don’t find the ‘sense & simplicity’ in the steam iron (Philips, are you listening?), because most of the times the water spouts or the steam jets get mistimed, or the gadget simply relieves itself on the clothes, not being able to contain its bladder. Plus, the water leaves its impurities’ marks on the vents, which sometimes reach your favourite shirts. So, it’s back to basics for me.
This reminds me of the iron-men found in the by lanes of my hometown. How they would magically turn a crumpled mess of fabric into a neatly folded pile of smart attire, in a matter of half an hour! And that archaic coal iron, with its triangular vents, and a heavy duty body, with a firm wooden handle on top: every time the iron-man moved in with his artist’s stroke, the iron would merrily click in its metallic timbre. Indeed, the locality iron-man was an artist, besides being a repository of neighbourhood gossip, which he told with his trademark contempt for the sahibs residing behind the fortified gates.
I’m also reminded of those Sunday mornings at home, when my dad used to impart me (my brother was never into learning all this, preferring to tonk the rubber balls to the farthest roof in sight) the skills of ironing the clothes. I savour those moments now, much as I detested them then, being tutored by a perfectionist master, who wouldn’t mind chiding regularly, or reddening my ear with a firm twist, every time I erred. But he taught me the perfect way to treat a pair of trousers or a shirt to the iron: basically, a lesson in fending for yourself in this world. Thanks Pa, how have these guised lessons in life’s philosophy come handy to me all this while!
But if you ask me my favourite fabric to iron, I’d say it has to be a starched Taant-er Saari of mom’s. I just love the crisp obduracy of the fabric in yielding! How it would make the water droplets hiss, by not letting the iron unravel its knots. It required a patience of an angler sitting by a pond. And to be rewarded by the sight of ‘my mommy most beautiful’ in a group of smiling women, thanks to the extra edge given by that beautifully woven expanse of magic, whose beauty was highlighted by little help from a little boy wielding iron. :)
As I get to the end of the pile of clothes, which had been mocking me for the last few days, I sense a smoothening of my mind’s creases, knots & wrinkles. It’s become easier to read now. The iron has indeed worked its warmth through all the rough and tumble the washing machine of this world has provided me with. I marvel at the iron-y of how a mundane task can alleviate you to the proximity of the sublime.
