But when it starts refusing its regular diet of water and detergent powder, I am forced to sit up and take notice. After all, there’s only so long that a person - even a person as slovenly as I - can go without clean UGs.
It had been off its feed for a while, truth be told. The last couple of times, its consumption of the detergent that was diligently served up had been well below par. But this time, when I opened the detergent tray to give it its usual dose, I saw last time’s complement lying there untouched and – what’s worse – not even mildly damp. Now, I’m not too finicky about how much detergent my clothes get (as long as it’s not too much) so I shrugged and closed the door and started the machine.
And then, I wandered off as usual, to do something more interesting.
A long while later, when I happened to pass the wash mach, it occurred to me that it was strangely silent – and had been for some time. I pressed my ear against its belly for several seconds, but caught not the faintest sound of it digestive juices doing their job. Hmmmmm – it was beginning to look like I needed to get involved.
First, I turned it off and left it to cool down. After a few minutes, it allowed me to open the door and I found, unsurprisingly, that the clothes were bone dry. I scratched my head for a few minutes before it occurred to me that maybe I should check whether there was any water in the tap. We had been having an extremely intermittent water supply for a few days. (We thought it was because of the reduction in Cauvery water supply, but it turned out it was a defective valve somewhere up the line.)
So, I unscrewed the attachment that fits around the tap and boom! A whole Sankey-tank-ful of water came gushing out. Well, that answered that question: water in the tap? Affirmative.
Those who’ve visited our home know that the wash mach top is the repository for all of Amit’s most valuable and also most useless paperwork. The valuable and the useless lie around in complete chaos, mingling freely with phone chargers, ancient rolls of film (from the days before the digital era!), functional and dysfunctional pens and various other odds and ends that have no other home at home. All of these, the valuable, the useless, the functional, the dysfunctional, the ancient, and the electrical, in short order were given a thorough drenching.
After a few minutes, I, having been given a fair share of the drenching, recovered myself sufficiently to utter some strong curses and set about doing some damage control. After 30 minutes, some sort of chaos was restored, most of the wet things from the wash mach having been provided temporary refuge on the dining table, which, therefore resembled a war zone. What next?
Let’s see, I thought to myself, whether water goes through the stupid hose and into the damn machine. So, I tried pouring some water slowly into the top of the hose, which was currently disconnected from the tap. No luck – it just came dribbling out. That was the extent of my attempts at diagnosis and repair. Clearly this was a task for the professionals.
I located the service centre number and lodged a complaint and was assured that a repair man would visit me tomorrow.
Then, I made the mistake of bringing my dear husband up to date on the sequence of events. The man, being in Beijing at the moment, was prompt in telling me what I should have done, what I should not have done, and what I should do next.
“Clean the filter,” said he authoritatively.
“What’s the filter?” said I, mutinously.
“Pull out the hose from the machine end, not from the tap,” he instructed.
“You pull out the hose from whichever end you want! I have better things to do,” I retorted hotly.
He did convince me to check the filter, but I declared it clean enough to drink from and refused to implement any more of his inane suggestions.
The next day, the repair man duly turned up and tackled the machine. In between talking on his phone and listening to FM on earphones, he pulled the hose off the tap, fiddled around with it, and put it back on. As far as I could tell, he did nothing else. But, when he turned on the tap, the machine responded with alacrity and the water gushed in with an almost alarming vigour. In minutes the machine was gurgling away happily to itself, and the repair man was 400 buck richer.
Huh! I could’ve done that!
