Like the other castes who supply the primary needs of the people,
the Dhobi is not regarded with much favour by his customers, and they
revenge themselves in various sarcasms at his expense for the injury
caused to their clothes by his drastic measures. The following are
mentioned by Sir G. Grierson: [557] '_Dhobi par Dhobi base, tab kapre
par sabun pare_', or 'When many Dhobis compete, then some soap gets
to the clothes,' and 'It is only the clothes of the Dhobi's father
that never get torn.' The Dhobi's donkey is a familiar sight as
one meets him on the road still toiling as in the time of Issachar
between two bundles of clothes each larger than himself, and he has
also become proverbial, '_Dhobi ka gadha neh ghar ka neh ghat ka_,'
'The Dhobi's donkey is always on the move'; and 'The ass has only
one master (a washerman), and the washerman has only one steed (an
ass).' The resentment felt for the Dhobi by his customers is not
confined to his Indian clients, as may be seen from Eha's excellent
description of the Dhobi in _Behind the Bungalow_; and it may perhaps
be permissible to introduce here the following short excerpt, though
it necessarily loses in force by being detached from the context:
"Day after day he has stood before that great black stone and wreaked
his rage upon shirt and trouser and coat, and coat and trouser and
shirt. Then he has wrung them as if he were wringing the necks of
poultry, and fixed them on his drying line with thorns and spikes,
and finally he has taken the battered garments to his torture chamber
and ploughed them with his iron, longwise and crosswise and slantwise,
and dropped glowing cinders on their tenderest places. Son has followed
father through countless generations in cultivating this passion for
destruction, until it has become the monstrous growth which we see
and shudder at in the Dhobi."