Clotheslines & Aesthetics

Clothesline - a simple rope to hang and dry clothes in residential buildings. It hasn't quite remained simple over the years! It became the subject of several laws and bye-laws of city councils and municipalities across the world to govern aesthetics of residential localities. Many years ago, walking around South Mumbai, we would wonder which of the buildings were residential and which commercial. We would guess that any flats that had clothes hanging off them were residential and the others not! Perhaps it was also a sign of the building not being too upmarket or at least not governed by any specific bye-laws about (not) displaying their dirty laundry.

Drying Clothes around the world

During my travels I have often observed how people in different countries dry their clothes. In Singapore/Hongkong - well designed? dry balconies with pipes to insert bamboo sticks to dry clothes on. In UK, backyards with the long clotheslines. And in the US and now most of the western world- dryers! They don't believe in free sun drying any more, preferring to burn and pay for fossil fuels and quickly finish their laundry on Sunday afternoons. In India -clothes are dried just about anywhere, including the living room! A friend was telling us about how they once put out a blanket to dry in the front balcony of their flat in Haifa, Israel and had the community police knock on their door five minutes later.

Innovative products
Indian architects and builders though started paying attention to this in many of the flats and houses that were built after 1995- Utility/Dry balconies became an architectural feature. A new range of products including innovative clothes stands, pulley operated multiple clothesline frame followed by each clothesline operated by individual pulleys. For some reason these products were first available and used in Mumbai and Pune. We carried one such clothes stand from Pune to be inundated by requests from our neighbours in Bangalore to get them one. Many decent apartments now have clotheslines tucked away towards the rear side of the flats and high up near the ceilings in dry balconies. Some (actually few) Indians have now started using electrically operated dryers in their homes so that they don't have to hang their clothes out and wait for them to dry - if they have power in their homes when they want to wash and dry their clothes, that is.

Should Clothes Drying be regulated?

In India we barely follow any rules in public places or at traffic lights, let alone any rules or bye-laws that regulate what we should do in (or just outside) our homes. One such discussion had a colleague point out that such rules in the West frustrate them too, where they freak out inside their homes to compensate for all the rules they need to follow outside! While googling for contact information of pulley operated clotheslines sellers in Pune, (to hide away drying clothes in our new place) I came across two interesting and contrasting directions on this sensitive topic (wonder why this was never seen as a fundamental right in the US - the right to flutter your clothes much like flying the American flag is! :) ).

Seems a new rule in Mumbai is going to regulate this soon. Read more about it here in a recent news item in TOI. Another one I came across was this article on a Blog by Nita Writer, about a backlash in Canada against these rules.

Do we need to regulate this in India or allow time and our architects and builders to provide the infrastructure - aesthetic, practical, working, easy to use and let natural (and increasing) pride keep their houses looking good (inside and out). Or perhaps, in these days of global warming, regulate the use of dryers or at least tax them heavily in India and promote and give tax breaks to those who use the free dryer - sunlight!