Just a Local Boy

Will says: "I don't know, that laundry is pretty cheap... Seems too cheap". 

He's been taking his shirts and pants to a young man just around the corner to be washed and ironed. He drops them off one day, and picks them up about a day or two later. 2 shirts and 2 pants -- 10 rupees he's charged. (That's about $0.25). 

Getting ready to leave the house on Sunday morning, Will starts to think about the clothes he's been getting back from the launders. They just don't smell that fresh. 

Come to think of it, that dirt around the collar hasn't gotten any lighter either. 

A conversation with the man next door, out in the hallway, brings more light to that increasingly funky smell... 10 rupees happens to be about what the neighbor pays to have his clothes ironed - only. 

"Just a local boy" our neighbor says of the young man with our laundry.

Then Will and I think back to what that young man around the corner is doing every time we stop by -- he's ironing. 

Do you know what that means? 

That means that Will has not worn a clean shirt since we arrived in India - over a month ago. 

Let's just say the colors of India I saw as I poured the soapy water out while washing those shirts in our big laundry bucket was not bright blue, orange or red -- it was black.