Thaiyamma's Story
After taking a loan of only $19, Thaiyamma and her husband were forced to chop wood by a slave owner for years on end. As their daughter was growing up in slavery, Thaiyamma discovered she was pregnant again—and she couldn’t bear the thought of her baby inheriting this same fate. Thaiyamma found the courage to stand up for her family and boldly advocated to IJM and government officials for their release in August 2016. Because IJM showed up right on time, she gave birth to her son in freedom just a few weeks after rescue came. Today, they are thriving and hoping to help others living in bondage in their community.
Thaiyamma and Devendran were barely out of their teens when their marriage and their courage were put to the test in the grip of modern-day slavery. After their little daughter, Lavanya, was born, the couple had found that their daily-wage jobs in road construction were not enough to get by. Relatives told them about a promising job in a wood-cutting unit outside the village—but within the first week they discovered this new job was not at all what it seemed.
Hard work was one thing: they and 13 other labourers were forced to toil from daybreak to nightfall chopping acres of trees, tangling with thick thorns, and loading trucks with lumber, all without adequate food, rest or pay.
Even worse was the slave owner who kept them there—a man Thaiyamma refers to only as “the beast.” After her first week, the Beast tried to sexually assault her, just as he had done with other women under his control. She managed to escape, but it was only the beginning of their misery in slavery.
Within two months, the grueling conditions started to take their toll. Lavanya got terribly sick, and Thaiyamma begged the owner for 1,000 rupees for her medical care (about $19)—a small debt he then used to enslave them for the next three years.
There were no walls keeping Thaiyamma and Devendran trapped, but they feared the Beast’s wealth and power and worried he would hurt their relatives in the nearby villages if they crossed him. So they worked tirelessly as he moved them from worksite to worksite to clear trees, bearing his disgusting insults and regular physical violence. He never allowed them to build homes or even tents to sleep in, so they slept under trees, exposed to the elements.
Thaiyamma remembers,
“Whenever it rained, I would take Lavanya and run to the nearby villages, seeking people to give us shelter…Once, the owner saw us hiding in someone’s house. He came and questioned Devendran and beat him up…Using us, he earned a lot of money. He ill-treated us and he enjoyed that.”
After years in slavery, she says they began to live “like zombies,” no longer able to care about their hygiene, food or dreams for the future. They kept Lavanya in a makeshift swing made out of an old sari, and they grieved every time she cried out in hunger.
“When we were in that place, we were very lean, wearing torn dresses with our eyes sunken in. People who saw us told we looked like dead bodies,” she remembers sorrowfully. “Life then was like hell…I thought there was no dawn in my life.”
Everything changed when Thaiyamma realized she had become pregnant again. She knew they had to get free somehow.
Being pregnant in slavery wreaked havoc on Thaiyamma’s frail body. She was exhausted and nauseous all the time, but the Beast continued to push her harder and harder. She mustered the courage to sneak out away from the forest one day to a doctor in town. The baby was alive, he said, but her blood count was far too low, and she needed nutrition, medical care and rest. All those things were impossible. Thaiyamma only had fermented rice porridge (“I was supposed to avoid that during pregnancy. I had no other option.”) and the occasional peanut candies she was able to buy for a few rupees near the worksite.
As her belly grew bigger and the abuse grew worse, Thaiyamma remembered how—years earlier—someone had seen their suffering and gave her the phone number of an IJM investigator. At that time, the other labourers persuaded her to not risk upsetting the slave master. Now things were different. Desperate, she called IJM and begged for release, especially for her daughter and other children.
The other labourers were rightly terrified of the slave owner and were discouraged from past attempts to get free. But brave Thaiyamma convinced them this opportunity would be different and tried to rally their voices to speak confidently when the day of rescue came.
IJM and local government officials arrived to the worksite in August 2016, and it was the heavily pregnant Thaiyamma who stepped forward boldly to describe all they had endured. Other women soon joined her, and then the men, too. Authorities rescued the families and arrested the slave owner that same day.
They were free at last.
Immediately, Thaiyamma was taken for a blood transfusion and urgent medical care. She felt her baby move for the first time in six months, telling Devendran, “I think our baby also got the glimpse of freedom, and he’s leaping for joy!”
Their son, Bablu, was born just a few weeks later, safe in a hospital bed. As she held him for the first time, Thaiyamma whispered in awe,
“I never knew I was going to see you. I never knew that I would meet you in freedom, and here you are.”
Today, Thaiyamma and Devendran’s life is entirely different from before. They have their own home in a village of other slavery survivors. Devendran has found good work, and Lavanya will soon start school. Brave Thaiyamma wants to use her voice to help others who are suffering, because she knows how transformative rescue can feel.
Watching her family in freedom, she remembers with a smile,
“My life came back to me.”
*Names used are pseudonyms
