This is the story of Sheikh Washing Machine bin Abdul Aziz Al Sasural (henceforth called ‘Sheikh’, due to word limitations for this article). Loosely translated, it means - The great washing machine bought by my in-laws from Saudi a few donkeys’ ears back. It had endeared a long and arduous journey from Riyadh to Delhi via Timbuktu and stood the trials of time (read approximately 15 years). Sheikh came into my family a few months back when we (my wife and me) were thinking out loud about our plans to buy a washing machine due to a maid crisis, in front of my in laws. Sheikh was stationed in their bathroom, unused. Well, not exactly unused, but I don’t think doubling up as a bathroom stand for shampoos, conditioners and other cleaning paraphernalia qualifies as utilization of a washing machine. Hence, Sheikh was duly transported to our home and occupied its place of pride in our bathroom and we looked at each other and smiled thinking that all our problems were solved. Too soon.
Though a senior citizen, Sheikh has everything you could wish for. He’s fully automatic, he’s front loading, he has a provision for hot water, and best of all, he has only 2 rotating knobs and 2 buttons (one for power and the other for taking in water from the pipe) for operational ease of use. In effect, all the various functions that he is supposed to do, starting from time set washing, rinsing, drying and draining, happens automatically based on the correct combination of settings on the two knobs. Could it be any simpler?
“Papa, do you have the user manual for this? I guess it’s better to understand the functions first before trying.”
“No Beta, we misplaced the manual during shifting. Don’t worry though. Just put the clothes in, press these two buttons and turn the left knob to ‘10’ and relax”
“Ok, sounds simple. What about the right knob? What does it do and when should we use it?”
“Oh, that is a useless knob. It doesn’t do anything much. We never used it, so don’t bother about it.”
“Uh, ok”
Next day morning I declare to wifey that I am going to do the laundry today and she can relax. I stuff the clothes into Sheikh, throw in lavish amounts of detergent, close the hatch, press the two buttons and turn the left knob to ‘10’. I can hear water gurgling as Sheikh takes in water from the pipe. Vroom and Sheikh comes to life and the drum starts rotating. I smile, admiring my smartness and go out to enjoy the daily newspaper. 20 minutes later I come back expecting to take the clothes out of Sheikh and hang it up in the clothesline for drying. Sheikh is silent. The rotating knob has stopped a few millimeters short of its destination and the hatch is still locked, preventing me from taking out the clothes.
I fiddled around with the knob and upon getting no response, I did the two most commonly used engineering resurrection procedures known to man under the circumstances – bang it from all sides and if that doesn’t work, kick it from all sides. Still no luck. Since we were getting late for office, i called up Papa and appraised him of the situation. He assured that he would come over later during the day and help take out the clothes that Sheikh had gobbled. He called me up later and explained that the left knob had a tendency to stop short before rinsing and drying. When it does that, somebody is supposed to slightly nudge the knob forward and Sheikh will do the rinsing. Once rinsing is over, Sheikh will again stop humming and somebody needs to adjust the placement of the pipe that drains out the water and Sheikh will drain it out and subsequently dry the clothes and unlock the hatch. Viola! It’s that simple. I could almost hear his tone saying “These kids of this generation have no patience at all”.
After the first debacle, we didn’t use Sheikh again on a weekday, simply because we realized that we just didn’t have the time to sit around with Sheikh and help him do our laundry. Weekends were another story. Once the clothes were in, we had to prioritize who needed our attention more – my 19 month old son who’s busy thinking up the next activity that can increase our blood pressure or Sheikh who would stop humming and wait for one of us to go and help him be ‘automatic’. We had enough. A few weeks later, I saw an advertisement of an exchange offer on washing machines and brought it to the attention of my Home Ministry (read wife). After much deliberation, we put forward the proposal in front of the House (read in-laws). They were shocked! How could we even think of exchanging Sheikh? Yes, he was old and yes he needed a little bit of nudging and manual intervention and assistance once in a while to be able to be ‘fully automatic’, but nevertheless, he still works fine. Decision - If we didn’t want him, we could return it to them and buy another one of our own. We decided to wait for the upcoming festive season for a good deal and keep Sheikh with us until then. We realized that no other washing machine could live peacefully in their house as long as Sheikh was alive. Wrong again.
A month back, my brother-in-law (stays with my parents-in-law) got married. Two weeks after the marriage, he and his spouse went on a major shopping spree and guess what they bought first – a brand spanking new washing machine! Upon casually mentioning that they could have taken Sheikh from us, he said “Ah no. It’s too old and complicated”! Gulp. We looked at Papa. “Does he ever listen to anything we say? But anyways, the new one is quite nice”!
Sheikh is being fully utilized these days. First row-shampoos; second row-conditioners; third row-detergent and brushes. The drum is our laundry bag. And who does the laundry, you may ask? Well, we have 2 fully automatic souls who do it in turns without any manual intervention, and are much more efficient than Sheikh– me and my wife!
