Fiction: A young girl continues working in an overheated silk factory despite endless exploitation

“Poobi! E…i Poobi!” Sheetli called her from the back, giggling.

Poobi ran off, remnants of food still on her fingers.

She was dressed in a floppy, faded gown, the one she was eating in. Hardly an elaborate meal – merely two ladles of rice scraped off the bottom of the pot. Poobi was waiting with a few stray shrimps and a sea of curry on her plate, confident that her mother would give her all the rice. She was chewing the shrimp shells with great concentration. But Poobi’s mother Chinta gave Sheetli the entire portion of rice without a second thought; Sheetli’s plate was dry, without any curry on it. And didn’t their mother know how big Poobi’s appetite was? She was absolutely famished this morning. The lamp at home had been put out after they had eaten the rice cooked last evening, as it always was – after which had passed an entire night, the dawn, and the early morning, with the sun a little stronger now. They would eat the rice preserved overnight by soaking it in water, with a little salt and lime added for taste, before going off to work. She could have accepted the extra rice being...

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