I asked a beta reader to read a book about a little girl growing up in the 1960’s. Her mother worked as a washerwoman. And the reader after reading it and giving her opinion asked have I ever heard of a Washer Man?
Hmmm? No I had not. Well, they introduced me to a new word.
Dhobi ( transl. ‘washerman’), known in some places as Dhupi or Rajaka (‘remover of dirt’), is a group of castes in India and the greater Indian subcontinent whose traditional occupations are washing and ironing clothes. … The word dhobi is derived from the Hindi word dhona, which means ‘to wash’.
A man who washes clothes, linens, etc., for hire; laundryman. The definition of a dhobi is a person who washes clothes in India.
I learned something new. 🙂
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About unholypursuit
A. White, an award winning former librarian, who is also a long time member of Romantic Time and Publisher's Weekly. A. White has been writing for over fifteen years. She took classes in creative writing in college, specializing in ancient myths and legends. and later at a local community center while living in Chicago. In college she won the national contest to verbally list every country in the world, it's capital and ingenious language. Her works are mainly horror, fantasy, extreme, and sci-fi as well as, as some may says, "the truly strange predicament and puzzling." Books that I've written are "Clash with the Immortals, and eleven others which are part of the "Unholy Pursuit saga,". She has been working on the Chronicles since 2007. She wished to complete them all before introducing them to public so the readers wouldn't have to for the continuation to be written.
The ideas of the book come from classic literature such as whose work greatly influence the world world such as Homer, Sophocles, Herodotus, Euripides, Socrates, Hippocrates, Aristophanes, Plato, Aristotle and many more. The "Book of Enoch" influenced the usage of Azazael as a main character and love interest. I created the primary main character from the Chronicle of Saints. I wanted to show them as real flesh and blood with thoughts, desires and yearning as any human. Not as they are so often depicted. So I created one of my own to show her as a real human that everyone can relate to.
unholypursuit
The Novel: UnHoly Pursuit: Devil on my Trail 
Yes it is the word Dhonn
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Thanks for visiting and thanks for letting me know, for I certainly did not know that there was a word for washerman.
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Yes In India they are. ☺️❣️❤️🌹🤗😊🍫🌷💐 Thank you. God bless you 😉🙂
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I will research it. 🙂
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Okay 👌👌🌹❣️🍫
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Does this Irish word “Dhonn” has a racial inclination? I’m somehow sensing it does. Maybe I am just super alert to such thing.
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May be but I don’t have any idea.😂😂😂 Search it and then send me🙂🙂😉Thank you.💐🌷🌹❣️🍫
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I have to ask because with colonization came lots of words better forgotten. 😦
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Yes it’s true but we are not too much aware of if. 😊😊
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From there the word dhobi came.
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Can you tell me a little more about the book? Learned a new word, too.
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Sure. it’s the story of the Civil Rights Movement as seen through the eyes of an African American child whose mother worked as a washerwoman and how these unskilled women were left stranded by the movement which took away their jobs but provided them with no other recourse.
No, a maid nor washerwoman was an uplifting job, but when these things were taken away many women and children were left stranded or having to rely on the Welfare system. And many places made getting the assistant one needed a living nightmare.
The primary focus of the Civil Rights movement was the plight of black men not the black family.
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Almost all these trades disappeared here after WW2 although you will find a launderette and a pressing service in even very small towns. Now, I’m prompted to find out whether dhobi also covers ironing as I seem to recall they were different people.
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Yes, I too, looked for more information on the occupation of a dhobi and found very little. I think it may have died out with the end of British colonization of India. I’m only able to find launderette and a few pressing services, therefore, I’m starting to wonder was it a Downton Abbey kind of thing, died out with the change of social and political climate of the nation, much like the African American washerwoman. An occupation forced upon the people during colonization. Washer woman, just as housekeeping was once part of the African American sharecropper’s wife job. It was usually done to pay for the hovel she and her family lived in or pay down the even increasing tab at the general store.
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Oh dhobis are still very much around in modern India. Probably more so in the country than in the cities but you still meet several a day in the cities. The ironing folk are different as they have set routes or locales that they visit for a spell and tout for everyone’s ironing and usually do it in their makeshift pressing centre roadside.
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Oh, I see why it is difficult to learn more about dhobis here in America. It’s considered a drudgery occupation. Drudgery work is considered hard, mindless, backbreaking work.
Wait, I thought the washing and ironing people were the same. How does anyone use an iron in a makeshift pressing center?
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It’s considered the same there but a necessary task. The ironing folk set up little braziers on the pavement and use heated flat irons.
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Oh, I see. I didn’t think it sounded like something anyone would do on their own, if not necessary to earn a living. Here they were called cast Iron irons. Usually they were heated on top a wooden stove,
https://rb.gy/oyxrto-
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Yes, here too but now just door stops! 😉
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Oh yes, the door stopper that breaks your big toe when running out the door for the umpteenth time after being told to stop running a hundred times. Oh! How well I remembers my grandmother’s cast irons. LOL!
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Haha, exactly so! 😉
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Flat irons means something different in the US. There are flat irons for ironing clothing but they are extremely heavy and industrial. Mostly used by dry cleaners.
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Ah ok, thank you. Over here they were made in various sizes and weights in the traditional ‘iron’ shape and made of … cast iron. 😉
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We have the portable ones that comes in all sizes; from the tiny cuff and collar irons to the big heavy ones and also the large flat things but all are obsolete in clothing care today. I doubt anyone knows how to use them. If you are not careful you can injure yourself quite severely.
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Flat irons means something different in the US. There are flat irons for ironing clothing but they are extremely heavy and industrial. Mostly used by dry cleaners.
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