Unlike the current generation, children of the 1970s were not fortunate enough to go to school wearing crisp, ironed uniform. Getting clothes pressed was beyond our means.
Year after year, we would go to school with wrinkled clothes, except on national festivals. We used to await the arrival of August and January, because on Independence Day and Republic Day, we could wear ironed uniform. During other times, the uniform was kept neatly folded under the bed or under a stool with weights placed over it.
Electric iron boxes were unknown then. Instead charcoal-heated iron boxes were used. Even that was unaffordable. In the entire village, one person would offer ironing services weekly. But the majority did not have money to pay him.
We would, therefore, choose a flat-bottomed brass vessel or pail. Putting red-hot charcoal embers into the vessel was a delicate task. It had to be handled with care, lest it burnt our fingers. Charcoal embers used to be available only in the morning after cooking breakfast and in the evening after dinner. In those days, cooking was done with firewood.
As the vessel was without a handle, clothes had to be pressed by holding its rim with a towel or some cloth. It required patience and skill.
One day while pressing, I suffered burns on my hand and on another occasion, a spark from the hot charcoal fell on my newly stitched shirt, making a button-size hole into it. This invited severe wrath from my parents.
Since then, I had not been ironing clothes for two decades till the electric iron box arrived on the scene. Even while ironing with an electric box, I take extra care to avoid getting electric shocks or burns. Such was the fear etched in my memory.
With the passage of time, electric iron boxes made their way into our homes, making our jobs so easy that even schoolchildren could iron clothes effortlessly. We are enjoying the comforts of ironing, but at huge environmental costs.
Published – May 25, 2025 04:28 am IST