While the city sleeps ahead of Pongal mornings every year, some women are already at work. Through the night, they sweep roads, clear waste, and keep public spaces clean so that celebrations can unfold without disruption. By dawn, when most households begin their festive routines, these women are heading home. Not to rest, but to begin another shift. With no leave granted for the occasion, the end of paid labour marks the start of unpaid labour.
Festivals, meant to mark rest and renewal, pass them by as just another workday, one where absence means lost wages or sometimes, even the risk of replacement. Their labour is invisible, precisely during festivities, when cleanliness is celebrated the most.
This burden of gendered labour is a familiar truth for most women. But for women sanitation workers, it doubles down with particular cruelty. After night-long shifts, they scrub their own homes, cook, and prepare for rituals on aching bodies and sleepless minds. The festival does not offer them joy or pause. It simply sharpens the inequality, revealing how those who clean the city are denied the dignity of rest in both their public and private worlds.
Kalaivani*, a sanitation worker from Chennai, walks us through her daily routine. The night shift begins at 10 pm and ends at 6 am. By 7 pm, after cooking dinner at home for her family of three and packing her food into a dabba, Kalaivani begins the long walk to the nearest bus stop, 20 minutes. She boards the 7.30 pm bus, spending another hour in transit. After alighting at her destination, the office where she marks her attendance is another 10-minute walk away, bringing her in close to 9 pm. Upon reaching, she sits briefly with the other women workers to eat the dinner she carries from home, washes her dabba, and lines up to mark attendance by 9.30 pm. Work is assigned, instructions given, and soon after, they begin cleaning.
“This has been my routine as a night shift worker for the last five years.” Pongal eve for her is no different. “It is the same routine. The difference is that on other days, I reach home by 8 am, cook and clean, and rest for six hours before starting my night shift again. On festival days like Pongal, I reach, clean, cook, pray, and barely rest,” she laments.
Prema*, another sanitation worker, speaks of shared labour born out of womanhood and necessity, where women quietly step in for one another, holding space for faith and care. Living farther away than most of her colleagues, because rent within the city is beyond her means, Prema leans on her neighbours who have become her “akka, thangachinga”, she says. “I return exhausted from work. I can manage to make pongal, but I will not have the time to make vadai and payasam. My sisters make extra and share it with me. I pray with the food they make for my family,” she says.
But many suffer from a lack of assistance from home, let alone their neighbours. Kalaivani says her husband is of “no help” and that her children are “young”. “All three help me with buying things for the house, and my husband helps me clean the fan and places I can’t reach due to my height. Otherwise, it is just me,” she explains. Mutharasi*, another worker, repeats a similar ordeal. “I have no help, not even from my husband. Yet I finish my night shift, go home, and prepare every food item needed for praying and finish the rituals,” she says, adding how she doesn’t bother about praying at the auspicious time. “That is where I draw the line. I believe that whatever time I pray at is auspicious,” she smiles.
Swarnalatha*, who works the day shift, also says she doesn’t bother about the auspicious time. “I pray at my convenience because I have to show up at work. We don’t have a holiday like other employees. We take leave only when we are unwell, and that also with pay cuts.”
It is not just the day of Pongal that drains them; the days leading up to the festival are just as punishing. The cultural insistence on deep cleaning before Pongal weighs heavily on these women. Apart from cleaning their own homes, what is discarded by the others finds its way to roadsides and empty plots, turning personal acts of renewal into public messes that sanitation workers have to remove. Bhogi, in particular, adds to their woes. The ritual of pazhayana kazhidhalum pudhiyana pugudhalum — the discarding of the old to welcome the new — often translates into piles of waste dumped or burnt in the open. For these women, the symbolism of cleansing becomes yet another aspect of labour, as they are tasked with cleaning up the consequences of a celebration that is meant to signify fresh beginnings.
In stark contrast, when asked how Mounasamy*, who works with Mutharasi, would manage Pongal celebrations after long hours of tiring work, he responded reluctantly, “Ammavum, appavum, wife-um paathupanga. Enaku enna iruku madam?” The ease of his answer laid bare the gendered divide. Around Mounasamy, the other women sanitation workers and I exchanged looks of little disbelief and absolute envy, with grins tugging at our tired faces at the thought of a duty-free festival.
(*Name changed)
FINDING LIGHT IN LABOUR
Though festivals are difficult, workers share the small moments of smiles and joy during Pongal:
Swarnalatha says many women hand out vessels, clothes, or toys during Bhogi instead of discarding them if they are in good condition. She says they are as good as new for her family.
Mutharasi loves stopping before houses to look at kolams and rangolis. Though she admits to not having the time to make kolams herself, watching other women sit after 10 pm immersed in the art makes her happy. “Sadly, some years the rain washes their efforts away too,” she adds.
All the women agree that among the many hardships they endure, getting the Pongal parisu (sugarcane, sugar, saree, veshti, and Rs 3,000) from ration shops has brought them happiness.