In North America there are so many stain-removing products and laundry detergents available to choose from that it makes your head spin when you walk down the household aisle in the pharmacy or grocery store. Sometimes even after pre-treating, soaking, bleaching and washing, the stain remains. It leaves me wondering why "our" fast-acting, super-duty laundry products aren't always effective?? Secondly, it fascinates me how clean clothes, especailly whites, get in rural India. Despite the fact that they're worn heavily, washed in mirky and sometimes filthy river/stream water with bar-detergent, beaten on slabs of cement or river rocks, dried on make-shift clotheslines that run alongside the train tracks and on grassy patches of land where cows are free to roam, the whites come out bright and stain-free.