A Pear and Two Plums.

My faith in God was not lost. I love Plums and Pears, and the fruit vendor opposite to my building had kept his promise and gotten a fresh stock. But I was not buying them because of the steep prices.

I located the "laundry-wala", exiting the "Q" wing of our society at 8.30am on a Monday.
It had been two weeks since the one opposite to our building premises had shut down and, for the first time in my life, I was ironing my clothes. Not that I could not do it, just that I always believed in offloading work if it meant financial benefit for the underprivileged.

After about a week of this daily routine I was getting bored. The building security was not doing a good job of sending some laundry-wala to my house. It was difficult to believe their story that they were unable to find one going in/out of the gate. My society is 12, 7 storied buildings. The security is undoubtedly the finest. [read "Catch Thief", one of my earlier blogs]
And I started to pray. I like to visualize everything that’s happening around/with me like a movie scene, and [Scene 1] I pictured myself standing on a barren, scorched piece of earth, looking at the heavens and praying for rain. In the background I could see my clothes that needed to be ironed.
That was not part of the script, but that’s what goofs are.

Next thing: the skies got all cloudy and there was thunder. Actually the doorbell rang.
I opened the door and there was the "most-wanted"(it would become clear later, why) laundry wala was there.
I hurriedly gave him all my tee's and was on my way to the office.

I was expecting him to come and deliver the clothes in about two days.
When he did not turn up on Wednesday, I started enquiring with the neighbors about him.
None of them had any idea. And it turned out that none of them had even given out their clothes on Monday. By Thursday,I was beginning to get worried and told the ever-vigilant security about it. They said that their logs did not indicate any entry from a laundry wala on Monday.
I immediately discounted that, since they had 3 tattered log books and I later also found out that the one they referred was last months!

So began the search for the unknown "laundry-wala". I did not have a name and a description like "about average height and thin with dark hair" was getting me nowhere. I first checked all the local road side stalls. None of them had my clothes. I was undeniably looked upon with suspicion and had to explain a lot before I got some answer. After I finished with them, it was time to move on to the laundry and dry cleaning shops. I went to about 8 of them in my neighborhood and was met with the same response - "No we don’t have your clothes, but you can look thro the pile if you want to".

It was quite an experience rummaging thro the ceiling high pile of clothes, wrapped in bed sheets with the name and number of the customer written on them. The scene in all the shops was the same - at least 4 shirtless guys ironing clothes, at least 2 kids, one playing one crying, and one "lady of the shop" busy preparing food for the family. They could never hear me properly because of some radio blaring in the background. I could never locate the source of the noise and am sure neither could they.

When I was in one of the shops, searching, an old Tamilian barged in and demanded, in Hindi, to see the owner. No one answered and all of them just watched. He was ranting about them being irregular in collecting, delivering the clothes, and so on and so forth. No one spoke. The old man finally gavethem an ultimatum - get the clothes now, or forget business with him. Everyone was speechless. One of the shirtless guys then said "Dineeeesh, jara dekh to sahab ko kya chaahiye". Turned out, none of them had understood his Tamil accented Hindi.

I, by now had a fair idea about the wardrobes of about 300 families but my tee's were still missing. As I was returning home on day 3 of my "search and rescue" mission, a fruit vendor, who sets up a stall opposite to my building tried to, once again, sell me the fruits. I was in no mood to buy and while I was thinking of some excuse not to buy the fruits, he told me not to worry. Worry about what? He said the clothes, don’t worry about the clothes.
I was completely bowled over and before I could recover, the cobbler pitched in and offered some reassurance. What was happening here?
The security aces were playing their part and spreading the word! Talk about teamwork.

Tirupati Balaji is one of the richest temples in the world. It’s hardly a surprise, when there are many devotees who vow to donate multiple kilos of gold, cash in millions and the like if their prayers are answered.
I silently vowed that I would not eat Plums and Pears until my shirts were found. Quite a sacrifice, considering I was already looking at some "Mega Discount - Buy 3 get 4 free" offers.

Sunday, I skipped my post breakfast nap and was off doing what I was getting really good at.
This time one of the guys in my building suggested that why don’t I check out the laundry wala that we have in house. He explained that since ours was such a big society, the members had decided to employ a guy full time within the premises. Yeah, I am getting to know this now!!
I was stumped. Apparently this guy had been right next to my building, and here I was searching for him all over the world. The security had not bothered to tell me this since the description I had provided was not in fitting the one in my building.

I rushed to him and it was the same scene again. But this time the guy I was looking for, was busy ironing clothes! What a relief. I could have never imagined that a sight of 8 ironed, white tee shirts would be a source of limitless ecstasy. Thankfully there were no tears of joy.
What happened was that he was not the regular collector and was doing the rounds on Monday because the regular guy was sick. And the regular had been bringing clothes to my flat every day after that, at 9.00 am, while I was at the office. It goes without saying that they were very much relieved to get rid of my clothes.

I thanked them and the security guards profusely and went and brought some fruits.

They say "There are two tragedies in life, one is not getting what you want, and the other is getting what you want".

They couldn't have been more correct.