Location: Just off Mahalaxmi station
Looking over the bridge near Mahalaxmi station, one can easily spot Dhobi Ghat. In light of its popularity, intensified by a recent film release called ‘Dhobi Ghat (Mumbai diaries)’, I expected a more sought after approach. However, the visual from above was but a trailer to an action-packed movie being shot down below.
Dhobi Ghat is set against a backdrop of sky scrapers, with sounds of passing trains whooshing through the air. On the periphery of this laundry, reside its workers, families in tow. Small hutments, living near open sewers and being continuously impregnated with the smell of chlorine, are lessons in stark reality lived in an unadulterated form. A typical day begins before the break of dawn and nears completion towards sun set. Seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year, the washermen are on the job. Festive holiday seasons such as Diwali, Christmas and New Year’s, are their busiest times.
Built during British times, it is now under the charge of Bombay Municipal Corporation. For a minimal yearly fee, the concrete washing enclosures – each one resembling a cube shaped bath tub – are rented out to the dhobis. A raised stone platform, meant for flogging the clothes, sits across the enclosure. While this archaic method of hand washing continues to be used for loose clothes sent by individual homes, large orders, from hotels, airplanes, hospitals, are washed in industrial size machines and tumble dried after. Spanning the length and breadth of Dhobi Ghat, drying lines sway against a gentle breeze. The clothes hanging off them absorb the sun’s rays from above. The standard operating procedures being followed at Dhobi Ghat remind one of Mumbai’s Dabbawala system. Thousands and thousands of clothes from all parts of Mumbai, some even from the nearby city of Pune, come to the doorstep of Dhobi Ghat on a daily basis and every one of them goes back, clean, crisp and neatly folded to its owner. While the dhobi’s may wonder how an activity as mundane as washing may attract such curiosity, it is no suprise that the world’s largest open air laundry, dominated by male washers, attracts hordes of visitors.
When I look back on my time at Dhobi Ghat, I see droplets of foam splashing everywhere. Men beating lifeless cloth, the sound of washing machines silencing their act. A large area, flooded with colour, cordoned off for washing saris. Jeans, all shades of blue, chilling out together. Pastel hues, emanating from shirts hanging upside down, in another corner. Running parallel to the railway track, a drying line, only for stark whites. Smoke from burning clothes lined with oil, making way into nearby lungs. Pipes start receding towards the end of day and water drains out of the concrete slabs. Men and women carrying dirty clothes, bundled up in an old faded sari are returning home. Dhobi Ghat is place one must visit, for it is here that you see Mumbai’s dirt and grime being washed off and in turn, providing life to this city of dreams.
Foot Loose in India 
Amazing work and so interesting. You are showing us sights of Aamchi Mumbai which i did not even know they exist. The pics are so colourful and captivating. News for me that Dhobi Ghat had washing machines and driers too.
Very good work. Keep me posted.
Wow! Great imagery in your writing! Keep it up!