Praying for Sunday
By the first week of June, the new girls are praying for Sunday to arrive. Their joints hurt. Their backs hurt. They come home from the factory with fingers punctured by needles or sliced by industrial clippers. Sitting still for eight hours is strange and new, and at times, the boredom is maddening. They sing to their machines. They pull hairs out of their chins. Baby amuses herself by giving herself little scratches on the wrist.
They are locked into the hostel except for “out passes” on alternate Sundays, which are granted by the factory human resources staff. A Gram Tarang “life skills” instructor makes the rounds inside the hostel, selling them 600-rupee jars of an Herbalife energy drink, which she tells them will help them keep up with the pace of work in the factory. It does give them energy — it includes caffeine and maltodextrin — but it also gives them diarrhea and eats up their remaining cash. This is no small problem, because they are running out of money for food.
They count the days until June 10, when they will be paid for their first two weeks of work. Prabhati and Shashi, who had left home with 5,000 rupees, or about $75, find themselves with 100 rupees between them. “If there’s no salary today, it’s going to be a problem,” Prabhati says.
On June 10, they are not paid. Three more days pass, and they still are not paid. Outside the factory window the sky has turned black and the air is churning; a curtain of monsoon rain is about to sweep in.
About 15 girls walk into Manjunath’s office, hearts pounding, to demand their pay. He looks up from his desk, annoyed. The usual genial expression has vanished from his face. He explains that he cannot solve their problem: The company has opened bank accounts for them, but the bank has not delivered their A.T.M. cards. Anyway, he dismisses the suggestion that the girls are running out of money. And who, he wonders, has given them the idea that they can make demands? He surveys the group in search of its leader.
“My clear understanding is that if you have a basket of fruits and only one is not good, it will spoil the other fruit,” he explains. “You have to take one out.”
When Jayasmita steps forward to say they have not eaten since yesterday, he swivels his head in her direction. He does not speak Oriya. “What did she say?” he asks a caseworker.
The girls are promised an advance for rice and are ordered to leave his office. They shuffle out. They had been planning to stop working unless they were paid immediately, but their strike has lasted less than five minutes. Jayasmita slumps against a wall, and vows never to try anything like that again.
“When you come to a new city,” she says, “you have to learn to care for yourself, and not bother with others.”
The money for the first two weeks’ work comes through three or four days later — after withholdings for pension, health insurance, lodging, food and kitchen furnishings, a grand total of 1,874 rupees, or roughly $28. This sum must last them for the next month. In the hostel room where Prabhati and Shashi stay, the amount of the paycheck is not relevant. They have never earned money before, only asked their fathers for it. A wave of happiness washes over all of them. They do not feel like girls, they say: They feel like boys.
They transfer credit — 30 rupees, 50 rupees — to the cellphones of their mothers, brothers, sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law and boyfriends, as if they were distributing sweets to celebrate some windfall.
Unable to wait, they call their families from cubbyhole A.T.M.s to share the news. This is not always welcome. Cuddles transfers a balance of 50 rupees to her father’s phone, but he considers it shameful to accept money from a daughter. He calls her, angrily, to say, “Never do that again.” Cuddles doesn’t care; she has never been so happy.
Prabhati and Shashi are among the last to receive their A.T.M. cards. They find a bank machine in between Krishna Jewelers & Pawnbrokers and Blooming Buds India Playschool. Leaving the A.T.M., Prabhati feels joy, but she is not the type of person who shows it. She scans the street, looking for some way to celebrate, and finally asks a man if she can borrow his bicycle for a moment. She climbs on top of it and pedals as hard as she can, her braid flying behind her. Then, taking note of his look of worry, she swings the bicycle around and returns it to its owner.
Shashi dances down the stairs and most of the way home. The money sends a wild thrill through her, so that she wishes she could fast-forward through the next month, and the month after that, and after that. So that life is a long string of paydays.
The two sisters make a pact: They will stay in Bangalore at least a year. They spend much of their paychecks on nose rings for each other, tiny specks of 22-carat gold. They place them on each other in front of their roommates, beaming, their faces so close together that they could be kissing.
Then Prabhati lies down on her stomach, full length, cheek to the cool linoleum. She is not feeling well.
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