Yesterday, I met Mirza. He seemed to be angry. When I asked the reason, he said “Yesterday, at Abid Road, I called you many times but you didn’t take the trouble of responding to me. Go, I won’t talk to you”,
I was very much worried. “what are you talking! I didn’t go to Abid Road for the past four days and you are saying that you called me?”
Mirza said, “Absolutely wrong. You were at Abid Road yesterday, I saw you from my own eyes. You were clad in your special grey coloured suit and walking very fast”.
After listening to this, I was astonished but when I analyzed this scientific issue seriously, I found out that my grey suit, which Mirza was mentioning, was safely preserved with my washerman now. When I analyzed it more seriously, then it became certain that what Mriza thought to be ‘me’, in fact, it was not ‘me’ but my washerman.
It is not a new thing. People have treated my washerman as the same way they treat me. Once, it was the height of surprise. My son started running after my washerman calling him “Pappa, Pappa” when he reached near him, he was surprised to see that the man standing in front of him in his father’s clothes, is his father’s washerman. I admonished him many a time saying, “you take my clothes for washing and not for wearing, but he won’t listen to my advice and he comes every eight days to demand clothes for washing. If I had power, I would have sucked his blood, but I am helpless. What is there to hide from you? If there is one thing, it can be hidden. Once, this good for nothing fellow appeared before me wearing my suit and he made his appearance with such a grandeur that I suffered from inferiority complex. On that day, my ego was very much hurt and in a fraction of a second the secrets of the philosophy of ‘ego’ as propounded by Dr. Iqbal were revealed to me that “if a man overthrows the garb of ‘ego’ his ‘existence’ is transformed into ‘non-existence’.” The reason was that I was clad in torn out clothes and this ill-natured fellow was clad in my new suit. What should I tell you, how much angry I got. For a while, it occurred to my mind that I must undress him right in the market and walk out taking my clothes. Before I could undress him, he slipped into the adjoining street. I, therefore, tell people, implead them, “for godsake, save me from my washerman”. If he makes his appearance before me again, I may kill him. Now that I am unable to restrain myself with anger, I lost control. If anytime, my washerman comes to me wearing my suit, I will strangle his throat.
Once in an angry mood, I caught hold of his neck in the market, he implored and told me, “Sir, the collar which you are ruthlessly pulling out, belongs to your shirt only. If it is torn out, it won’t be my responsibility.” When I heard his sentence, the grip of my hand was automatically got loosened and then, he ran away. Whenever I think of attacking the washerman, the safety of my clothes comes to my mind. This situation very much resembles to the scenes of our films. Whenever the villain wants to beat the hero, the heroine comes and stands in front of the hero and since the villain is also unnecessarily involved in love with the heroine, he keeps his pistol calmly in his pocket and runs away to a far off place. Whenever I see my washerman clad in my clothes, inadvertently, I recollect the joke when a person went to his guest and when he started using all the articles of his friend, his friend one day complained to people about his friend’s activities saying, “He is a wonderful man, he uses my shaving set when he needs to shave his beard. He uses my clothes whenever he has to go somewhere. All these things I tolerate but my heart receives a shock when he uses my denture to chew beetle nuts. He make my personality the target of ridicule. The sadder thing is that he grins at me exhibiting my denture. Tell me, how mean this activity is.
If you really ask me, my washerman also treats me the same way. Wearing my suit he bullies the grace of his suit in front of other people and I consider myself without dress. Now, you only decide won’t your blood boil in such a situation? Won’t you feel your heart in your mouth? The marvels of my washerman won’t cease here but he certainly creates such a situation periodically by which my blood pressure shoots up so high as if it is in conversation with the sky. Once I was giving my clothes for washing. When I gave my black trousers, he then told me, “Sir, you didn’t give me your yellow shirt for washing.” I told him that the yellow shirt has not yet become dirty. Why should I give that shirt?”
After thinking for a while, he told, “Sir, the fact of the matter is that I have to attend a marriage function of one of my relatives and the yellow shirt matches the black trousers.”
I told him, “What is the relevance of my yellow shirt matching with my black trousers?”
Reluctantly, he said, “Sir, both these matters match each other. You won’t be able to understand their interrelatedness.”
When I considered his talk philosophically, it was revealed that this good for nothing fellow wanted to wear my clothes on the occasion of the marriage of one of his relatives, but it is very sad that this point became clear to me when he had already gone after taking my black trousers. I didn’t know where was his relative’s marriage being celebrated, otherwise I would have certainly reached the spot and would have turned the marriage into a mourning ceremony.
God only knows what sort of animosity my washerman has with my clothes that he always gives my clothes to others and gives the clothes of other persons to me. Once he lost my shirt and to compensate it, he gave me a very wretched shirt. I tried to prevent him again and again and I told him that, “I won’t wear this shirt, I don’t know whose shirt is this? For God’s sake, give me back my shirt.” He said, “Sir, certainly, your shirt has gone to somebody else’s house. I will certainly get it next time.”
Willy-nilly, I kept that shirt with me. When the stock of my clothes was exhausted, I had to wear it. Wearing this shirt, I was sitting in a hotel. A man caught hold of my neck suddenly and started saying, “You are a thief! Remove my shirt, otherwise I will hand over you to the police.” I tried to convince him. I gave the reference of my washerman but he didn’t accept. At last I had to walk upto the police station.
Some courageous fellow defined washerman, thus “A washerman is a person who tries to break the stone with the help of a cloth”. So, whenever I get my clothes washed, I suspect that with the help of my clothes, the washerman might have broken many stones. That is why the collars of my new shirt have stretched their mouths and the legs of my trousers are turned into frills. The washerman had treated one of my pyjamahs very badly, that is, when I inspected the pyjamah very carefully, what I saw is that in that pyjamah, instead of two legs, only one leg is existing. I asked him, “Brother – ! Always there used to be two legs in my pyjamah, how is it that only leg is remaining?” He told me, “Sir, don’t worry next time, you will get another leg also,” but I didn’t get the other leg so far.
And again, clothes are returned from the washerman with great difficulty. For this, there has to be a regular lobbying, the washerman has already carved thousands of pretexts for washing the clothes late. If it is rainy season, he says that there was heavy rainfall. When it is summer season, he says that there is no water available at the washing place. Once, in the winter season, the reason he mentioned for getting the clothes late as “Sir, you have not given warm clothes for washing this year. This is the reason that I didn’t wash the clothes on time.” I asked him, “What is the relation of washing clothes late with the warm clothes? He told me, “Sir, it is very cold, so as long as I don’t wear any warm clothes, I can’t wash clothes. So, in future, take care that whenever you give me clothes for washing, please include warm clothes in them, otherwise you won’t get back your clothes washed early.”
The washerman finds out the pretext of season very easily, but when he doesn’t get it easily, he starts killing his relatives one after the other. Sometimes, he says, that his father died and on the other time he says that he lost his mother. I remember very well that he has so far killed four of his fathers and five of his mothers but the police doesn’t take any action against him. Whenever he is in good mood, he also kills his mother-in-law and when he quarrels his wife on any day, he doesn’t even hesitate to kill her.