“Ve! What are you doing there, scratching your head instead of doing your work?” The mean taskmaster Ebenezer’s harsh tone jolted Devapichai and he snapped back to reality, like a person aroused from slumber. It was only then that he noticed the customer standing across from him, waiting to purchase some fabric. “Sir, what do you want? Four cubit or eight…?” he asked mechanically.
Sesuvadiyaan, who manned the towels section next to him, murmured to him in a low voice, “I tried to warn you a couple of times that the manager was staring right at you … but you paid no heed.”
“… I was preoccupied with some thoughts … Ayya, what did you ask for? … Eight cubits of Gundanj veshti? What price range did you want that in…”
Ebenezer stood at the second counter and continued to watch Devapichai with a scowl on his face. Even though the air conditioner was running, Devapichai felt like he was oozing sweat. Right when he was in the middle of displaying the veshti the customer wanted to see, Ebenezer walked over to him and began to reproach him straightaway. “Ve … do your work properly and pay attention to the customers.
Or else, I will inform the owner and have you sent to the godown to tack stickers. There is no AC there … or anything else … You will die there, in that sweltering heat. Do you want to go to the godown?” he demanded brusquely, oblivious to the customer’s presence. The customer gaped back and forth between the two of them. “No, Ayya … I will do my work,” mumbled Devapichai, cowering down.
Ayya! Why does he have to address Ebenezer who was barely as old as his son as “ayya”? Devapichai wanted to grab the measuring stick and whack him on his head with it. The air conditioner continued to run with a soft whirring sound. A large family stood gathered together in the children’s ready-made garments section on the northern end. A girl in that group looked exactly like his youngest daughter Annabhagya Mary.
Six years had flown by since he started working at the three-storey Santhosh Textiles. The only reason he had started working there was to repay a small debt he had accrued from the wedding expenses of Annabhagya and Gnanam, his two daughters. Even though Gnanam’s husband had said to him, “Mama, you don’t need to go to work. This is hardly an amount to worry about. I will take care of it.” Devapichai’s conscience couldn’t allow that. Whatever said and done, he was his eldest son-in-law. How could he have him repay his debt?
The ground floor at Santhosh Textiles was entirely dedicated to saris. The next two floors had clothing for men. The topmost floor was for bedsheets, carpets, rugs and curtains. On the terrace was a shed erected for the 40 employees to reside in. Each one of them lived, bathed, ate and slept there. The owner Chelladurai never hired anyone locally – he cherry-picked people from villages that were at least 40 or 50 miles away to work for him. Every employee allegedly got a different day off from work every week. But none had anyone to visit nor anything to do in that town. Neither could they go home for just that one day. Consequently, all they could do, and did, was to spread their mats and lie around under that rusty, old canopy. Sometimes, when they were summoned to help out in the godown, even that one day of respite was lost. Working here was no different from being in prison. To that end, the owner had “supervisors”, or three taskmasters, just like Ebenezer, to keep pushing the employees around constantly and to snitch about everyone’s activities to the owner. Nothing the employees did, including eat, ever escaped their watch.
If an employee was Christian, he would get five days of leave from work for Christmas. For Muslims, it was during Ramadan, and for Hindus, the five days were around Deepavali. That was the only time they could make a trip home. Once, a man named Shanmugam from Nanguneri went home for Deepavali and did not come back at all. To make things worse, he had taken an advance of 3,000 rupees on his salary. Two of the owner’s men were sent over to find him and bring him back.
The labour officer never set foot into the building.
A week had passed since Devapichai had decided that he could not be in this jail any longer. But he still didn’t know how to make the flight. The owner’s men were posted everywhere. Even a visit to the church or temple was accompanied by one of the taskmasters the whole time. He just had to escape from here. Even if they tried to bring him back after that, his two sons-in-law together would protect Devapichai from them. Finding a way out occupied all of Devapichai at all times, including when that slave-driver Ebenezer had pounced on him and torn him apart.
They sent his salary – if he could call that pittance so! – directly to the family. After they deducted money for everything, including food, seven hundred rupees was all that was sent to his wife Rosappoo. Separately, though, every month he received an allowance of 25 rupees to spend on toiletries. He had managed to scrape together about four hundred rupees from that. Enough to get him home.
The only time the taskmasters were not with them was during lunch. Typically, four persons were allowed at a time to eat lunch. If he could somehow get to the third floor at that time, he thought, he could exit through the stairs at the back of the store which opened directly to the adjacent street. Those stairs only served to move large bales of clothing whenever they were delivered. Occasionally, the door to those stairs was inadvertently left unlocked.
That afternoon, Devapichai deliberately ate his lunch rather unhurriedly. Thangapandi and Manikandan said, “Annachi, you take your time to eat, we will leave now,” and left him there by himself. Thavasimuthu, the server, had also gone into the kitchen to retrieve something. This is the moment, Devapichai decided, rinsed his hands quickly and set out. He snuck over to the third floor and checked the stair door. To his surprise, the door had been left open. He immediately slipped through the door and rushed down the stairs as fast as he could, walking and running at the same time. He reached all the way to the door that opened onto the adjacent street, only to find Sannaasi, the taskmaster from the sari section, standing there, smoking. “Annachi … what brings you here?” he asked Devapichai when he saw him. Devapichai squirmed slightly as he drew out his response: “Nothing really … the phlegm congestion is bothering me … want to buy some medicine…”
“Why do you need to go out just for this? That manager, he has all the medicines you need…” the taskmaster said.
“Oh yes … I completely forgot about that,” Devapichai replied, and retraced his steps back into the shop.
Excerpted with permission from ‘The Flight’ by Vannanilavan, translated by Janani Kannan in Tamil: The Best Stories of Our Times, edited by Perundevi, HarperCollins India.
