Manmohan the Molesting Masseur

It had been a long week and I decided to pamper myself with a soothing massage over the weekend. My friends believe that I have no excuse for ‘having a long week’ because all I do is ‘watch cricket’ for a living anyway. However, watching India getting pummeled through most of the English summer, and being forced to statistically appreciate and analyze the gory details, can take its toll on one’s mental health and sanity. But I digress..I’ve never really enjoyed a massage. Stripping down to your birthday suit and then getting into an attire that resembles a shower cap with three openings is not exactly a reassuring process. Hearing your joints crack and feeling your muscles cringe at the slightest squeeze does not leave you feeling great about your fitness either. But that’s just me, or maybe the masseurs I’ve had. “Sir, mast aaram hoga, mere hathon me jaadoo hai (My hands are magical)”, says Manmohan reassuringly. Manmohan hails from the state of Orissa, the birth place of the rasgulla, and genuinely believes that his hands have magical powers. Every Bengali will claim that the ‘rosogolla’ is a Bengali creation. Pahala, a village near Bhuvneshwar is supposed to be the birth place of the yellowish brown rasgulla, or ‘Kheer Mohon’, that was used as an offering to Lord Jagannath. Nobin Chandra Das, a Calcutta confectioner, and later his son KC Das, popularized the white, spongy, Bengali version of the sweet that could be preserved for much longer. But again, I digress..As Manmohan applied gentle pressure on the shoulders, I began to think that maybe he did possess magical powers after all. Was I beginning to develop a taste for massages? It was at this vulnerable moment that Manmohan decided to ask for a favour. We had gotten talking earlier and he stumbled upon the fact that I was a lawyer. It was just easier to say that I was a lawyer than to describe, in my hindi, a profile as a statistics sub editor with ESPNCricinfo..“Sir, muhje maaloom tha ki bhagwaan kisi ko mere paas bhejega (I knew God would send someone to me)”, he said. I don’t know why he was waiting for God when he could have just walked up to the city civil court and found a line of lawyers desperate for work. I suppose those lawyers weren’t going to help him for free..Manmohan explained how his previous employer had fired him after two months of service, apparently for misconduct, without even paying for services that he had already rendered. He approached them multiple times seeking the payment of his dues, but was always shooed away. Resigned to his fate of never recovering the money, he found himself massaging the shoulder of a former lawyer, and as fate should have it, a former employment lawyer..Now, the law dealing with such situations is fairly straightforward. An employee can be terminated for misconduct, but only after a fair enquiry proceeding is held to establish his guilt, and only after clearing all his dues and making his severance payments. I had not done any legal work for a few months, and the prospect of dabbling in some excited me, so I agreed to try and ease his troubles..A visit to his previous place of employment, also a massage parlour, revealed a completely new side to the story. The employer here alleged that Manmohan used to offer his services to female clients, which was against the rules of the establishment. Female clients were only to be attended to by female staff. Despite being told multiple times, Manmohan continued to do so, and some clients, unaware of the establishment’s rules, even accepted his offers. Tired of his antics, the employers eventually showed him the door..It would appear that Manmohan may not be a saint. However, he still deserved to be paid for the months that he had worked. Technically, he would be entitled to this amount even if he had committed murder on the premises. His old employer was a nice lady, more than open to reason, and eventually paid him the amount that he was due, though she refused to deal directly with him or even look at him..His old employer clearly knew the law, and yet was not the type of person waiting to flout the law. She eventually paid up quite happily. Why then didn’t she pay him at the time of dismissal?.I believe she did so simply because she could. Manmohan was unlikely to know the law, and even if he made a few attempts to retrieve his money, he could be worn down without significant effort..A lot of us are like Manmohan’s former employer. When driving in the wee hours, we sometimes jump a red signal if there are no vehicles in the vicinity, or drive through a one-way street. We don’t do this out of a lack of civic sense, or out of utter disregard for the law..We do it because we can..Doing either of those things in the wee hours causes no harm to anyone, and the risk of getting caught is miniscule, so why not we think. We are happy to follow the law in the daytime, especially when policed. Just like the lady was happy to pay up when she had to..It is difficult to feel sympathy for Manmohan in this story. Maybe Manmohan was at fault. Maybe he wasn’t but he was entitled to his money anyway. Furthermore, it is unlikely that his is the only case of its kind in the country. The employers in those cases will probably still take advantage of their blue-collared ignorance. In this case, Manmohan was just lucky to find someone to fight for him. What about those who are not as lucky?.In fact, it is probably fair to say that this single incident is symptomatic of a larger issue plaguing blue collared workers across the country – an acute lack of awareness about their rights. This often leads to them being cheated into agreeing to work for lower wages, being given poorer benefits etc. The way Indian employment law is structured, with more than 50 central laws and 200 state laws, even lawyers sometime take a while to get their heads around it..And there are a number of instances where corporations from developed western nations shut down manufacturing facilities in their home countries to send the jobs over to nations such as India where it is legal to pay low labor wages, and the regulations are significantly more lenient..India’s literacy rate has grown from 12% in 1947 to 74% in 2011 and even though this may not be indicative of legal awareness, it is probably safe to say that the graph is moving in the right direction. It may still be a while before we have blue-collared workers standing up for their rights, but we don’t really want to be waiting around till we face a revolt. If we stop playing the system, the less aware amongst us will not have to fight for their rights. If Manmohan’s employer had paid him his due, he wouldn’t have had to count on bhagwaan..It is in everyone’s interest to play by the rules..Let us stop at the red light even if no one is watching.