It was a hot summer morning when I saw a man of slim stature and medium height get off his bicycle from my living room window. Srini pressed my doorbell while I was getting my five-year-old son ready for day care before leaving for office. He had well-oiled hair with a centre parting, and a grey tika on his forehead, an indication of his morning puja. Srini looked like a simpleton who had lived in a village till then and who seemed to have recently come to the city in search of work. He wore a plain white half sleeved shirt with small grey stripes that loosely hung over his brown trousers.
“Batte,” he said, which I knew meant clothes in his mother tongue. But I wondered what this man with a squeaky, keen voice wanted. Why was he asking me for clothes? My son who was playing with his superhero character toys on the floor also paused and looked at my blank face.
“Batte,” Srini said again but it still didn’t get any response from me. He was at a loss of words and looked around trying to search for an appropriate word.
“I.. Srini.. umm.. I run.. Iron,” he said, acting out a clasped fist rolling it over an imaginary flatbed.
My son stood. In a spontaneous voice he raised the superhero toy in his hand and yelled, “Iron Man.” Srini looked at him, pointed a finger indicating that my son had got what he wanted to say. He loudly repeated, “I run, Iron Man.” Finally, I realised what he wanted the clothes for.
I ran inside and got the laundry bag that was waiting to get emptied since the past week or so. I tottered along carrying the heavy load to the door where he waited. Srini asked me for a bedsheet which ended up becoming his packing bag for the clothes.
Srini watched my son fiddle with the bag of toys while he packed the clothes. Srini looked at him but didn’t say anything. “Play School,” I told Srini. I am not sure he got it, but he leered mildly.
“Iron Man,” he muttered under his breath, nodding his head with a faint grin, while he pulled out the clothes one by one and put them on the bedsheet on the floor. He had got a name that he would now use to identify himself to the rest of the apartment.
He counted the clothes with concentration. He did not speak while the counting was on. This was a process he followed every time he came to collect the clothes.
“Twenty-Seven,” he said, and I nodded. I had counted the clothes with him. He knotted the bed sheet to parcel the clothes and pulled it over his shoulder.
He got a small packet out from his pant pocket. I looked at what it had in eager anticipation. He peered at me as if he were opening a little treasure. It contained a grey powder, a pinch of which he picked up holding it between his index finger and thumb.
He looked at me asking for permission with folded hands and the cues of his eyes. On seeing my nodding head, he applied it on the forehead of my son. His face had a smile of satisfaction on a job well done. It was an unexpected gesture from Srini, but something that my son came to expect almost every time Srini came to collect the clothes.
My son gave him a high five and said “Iron Man.” After that, every time he came to collect the laundry, he introduced himself as ‘Iron Man’. I was happy that the major problem that had troubled us after moving into this far-flung apartment had found a solution. In that sense, he was no less than a superhero for us.
“Naale Saayankale,” was his parting remark. It meant tomorrow evening. That was his standard turnaround time. He followed it without fail for the next fifteen years or so.
It was only when the count exceeded a certain limit, say thirty-five or so, that he asked, “Urgent?” to which, most of the time, my response was a shaking of the head.
Sometimes my wife shouted from the room inside, saying “Uniform” which Srini heard and without fail, delivered my son’s ‘urgent’ school uniforms on the following day while the other clothes waited.
When he got the clothes back, his daughter, only a few years older than my son, often accompanied him. She loitered around till her father did his job of delivering the ironed clothes. My son sometimes showed her the toys. Srini scolded her not to play with them. She stood there, just inside the main door, once bitten twice shy.
Srini had a small chit of paper inserted between the folds of the covering bedsheet with a small calculation of the bill. After delivering the clothes, he got the chit out, handed it over and waited.
Exact change was almost always never available while paying him, but the Iron Man never complained. On many occasions, he let go of the last few rupees, leaving me embarrassed for taking some free work at his expense.
He just said, “Ok Sir” in his squeaky voice and without any change of expression walked away with the lesser payment, without noting it anywhere. I always told him “Next time” and forgot about it. I never saw him carry a diary or any record of his accounts. In the later months and years, his wife joined him in their ‘business’ but she too followed the exact same standards and procedures.
For many years, the Iron Man came to our house on Saturdays and delivered the ironed clothes, with his daughter in tow, on Sunday evening or Monday at best. Every time he came to collect the clothes, he enquired about my son if he didn’t see him playing in the living area. He often gave him a toffee or a candy if he had it when he saw him. Or put a tika from his grey powder if he carried it. His daughter looked on at her father as he smiled at my son saying ‘Iron Man’ every time. My son always welcomed ‘Iron Man’ with a war cry. They seemed to have this little game between themselves.
***
Months passed and eventually turned into years. Srini’s bicycle got replaced by a gearless bike, and the packages of clothes became bigger. His weekly visits started becoming once in two weeks as the number of flats for whom he was the ‘Iron Man’ increased with increasing occupancy.
“Did you see my peacock green top?” my wife asked me one day while perusing through her wardrobe a few years back. I had no reason to see it, except when she wore it.
“Didn’t you wear it a couple of days back?” I asked accordingly.
“Yes, I haven’t seen it after that. That’s why I am asking.”
“It must be somewhere in the shelves.”
“It is not there. Did that Iron Man give it back?”
Over the years, I had stopped checking. Srini simply took the clothes, counted them, and returned them. I blindly trusted the paper chit he passed on and paid him the amount without checking.
The number of clothes had increased over the years to make this kind of checking infeasible. Besides, I never thought it was necessary. But my wife almost always had a slight eye of suspicion when it came to her clothes. For what reason, I never knew, but she didn’t trust him fully.
The next time he came to pick up the clothes, I asked him casually if he had seen any green top. I wanted to ensure that the sensitive simpleton doesn’t feel like I was accusing him of anything.
Srini noted it silently but didn’t say anything at that time. Language can be a barrier at times. But on this occasion, it wasn’t. The dim smile on his face belied the hurt that my question might have caused inside him. He twisted his lips, put the bag on his shoulders and left quietly.
When he returned with the ironed clothes set after two days, he kept the clothes and walked away without handing me the bill chit. He asked his daughter to wait at the door and didn’t wait to give a high-five to my son.
I asked him for the bill, but he hadn’t got any chit this time. He simply smiled faintly and said, “Next time.” That next time never came, and he never took the money for that set of thirty odd clothes.
I realised later that it was his way of compensating for the green top trouble. It turned out later that it was an unnecessary compensation for no fault of his.
My son found the green top the following day while he was playing downstairs. It had flown away from the clothesline in the balcony due to the wind and had fallen off in the lawns. I told Srini that we had found it and insisted that he take the money for the set of clothes that he had waived off. But he simply smiled and walked off, not taking the money.
We compensated him for such acts by donating some of our used clothes to him or by buying something for his daughter during festivals. We felt it might help his family’s situation. He accepted them with a lot of hesitation. I always worried that pushing him too much would hurt his ego.
Every time he took something, he smiled at my son and said “Iron Man.” He never forgot that this was a name that my son had given him. They seemed to have some kind of unexplained bond.
***
Last year, Srini and his wife disappeared for a period of two months and the clothes started piling up in the laundry bag. We tried calling him on the phone but for a couple of times, he just said that he will be back after a week or two without giving any reason.
We ironed some of the clothes that were urgently needed at home but as the weeks became months, the pileup of clothes in the laundry bag overflowed. I had to find a solution to this problem now and an online app was doing the rounds in the apartment group. With no signs of the Iron Man or his wife, I finally placed an order on that online app to get our clothes ironed.
Later, one morning when the doorbell rang, I found that it was Srini standing in front of my door. But he did not say “Batte” this time. He had come for another purpose.
He wore a kurta instead of his customary white half shirt and had an orange tilak on his forehead. He handed me a card in the local language which I couldn’t read. I asked him what it was for. From the pictures, it looked like it was an invitation for someone’s wedding.
He broke into a smile, in fact a wide grin, that I saw for the first time in all these years. He said something that I didn’t understand.
“Maga…,” he said, asking me to call my son, as he could speak the local language.
“Iron Man,” my son who was now in college greeted Srini with warmth, when I called him.
Srini spoke to my son for a full five minutes or more, almost without stopping. Their conversation, or more like a monologue by Srini interspersed with a few acknowledgements from my son, was animated. I watched both of them, awestruck, unable to get what they were talking about. But one thing was clear that there was a lot of emotion when Srini spoke.
My son told me that the Iron Man had invited us to his daughter’s wedding which was scheduled later that month. He said that it was in his village. The preparations were in full swing in the village. He said he was looking forward to welcome guests. He had whole-heartedly invited many of his customers in the apartment to the wedding. He said he would be honoured if his esteemed customers would grace the occasion. He was willing to arrange for our transport. He proudly provided some more details about the groom and his family.
After my son finished, Srini folded his hands and with a bowed head and cheerful face, he left.
I didn’t realise that his daughter had grown that old to have become marriageable. Maybe in their village, they marry girls early, I thought with a tinge of demur. I looked at the invitation card after hearing what my son narrated. I dwelled on whether I should take the pains to attend it.
I tried to find out where exactly it was. I felt it should be practical and worth the trouble. It turned out that it was just over an hour’s drive from the city. I felt I should attend if possible, but I wasn’t sure whether it was going to be feasible.
I checked with some of my neighbours. They had received the invitation as well, and I found that they were in two minds about attending it as well.
As the days passed and the date of the wedding came close, I got a call from Srini and so did all the neighbours. He spoke in the language that I did not understand, but the language of his heart did not escape me. The father of the bride made earnest attempts to invite us for what seemed to be the zenith of pride in his life. A neighbour told me that he broke down on the phone when he called him.
Everyone said good things about the Iron Man and how he had been a great help with his sincere, honest, and reliable work over the past fifteen years. But in all of that, I could sense that, like me, no one really took his invitation seriously. It did not seem to make it to the must-attend list of anyone. Everyone nodded when asked if they planned to go for the wedding. Everyone said we should go.
Some of my neighbours said he had served us well. Others felt it was he whose station in life got elevated because of our apartment. Another neighbour told me that his daughter was a graduate, hearing which someone raised objections on getting her married so soon. Amongst these discussions, no one spoke about the specifics of when and how to go. That just escaped everyone.
I found myself caught up in something on the day of the wedding.
A few days before the wedding date, I had told myself that even if I didn’t go, I will send across a bouquet or some card or gift to the venue. But, for some reason, I found that even that escaped my mind on the actual day of the wedding.
My son and his friends had a small lunch get-together at home that day. They ended up watching a movie in the afternoon, while me and my wife went for a small shopping trip, preparing for the next week of work.
When we returned, my son’s friends had gone back home. I asked him what movie did they watch, and it was only when he replied, “Iron Man 3” that I remembered what I had forgotten.
I told my wife about it with a tinge of guilt. She shirked it off saying it’s ok, he is just our clothes ironing man. We will give him something when he comes to pick up the clothes the next time, she cajoled me. I felt that was a reasonable thing to do. After all, it was not very convenient to attend the wedding, I convinced myself.
I checked with some of our neighbours, and found that everyone was, more or less, in the same boat as us. No one had gone for the wedding. Everyone said we will give him a gift when he comes back.
A few weeks passed and Srini still did not turn up to collect clothes. Many of us tried to call him, but he did not pick up the phone. I checked with my neighbours and found that they faced the same situation. Everyone started complaining that he had become irregular even before his daughter’s wedding. Someone said that now that his daughter was married, he didn’t need the money. Another neighbour felt angry that after having done so much for him, he treats us like this.
For some reason, my intuition told me that those were not the reasons. From whatever I had seen of him, I got a nagging feeling that it had something to do with none of us attending the wedding.
After a month or so, when I called Srini, he repeatedly rejected my call and switched off the phone later. I could not reach him. Left with no other option, I decided to place an order with the online app. The Iron Man never came back to my flat again.
***
Initially published as part of People We Know and other stories, Iron Man Srini is part of Potpourri.