Sodden Downstream is an impressive novella from New Zealand author Brannavan Gnanalingam, recently featured in Meet a Kiwi Author. As you can tell from the cover design, the book is concerned with the everyday, but the question that arises from reading it is, how did the everyday come to be like this?
This is the blurb:

Thousands flee central Wellington as a far too common ‘once in a century’ storm descends. Roads are closed and all rail is halted. For their own safety, city workers are told that they must go home early.
Sita is a Tamil Sri Lankan refugee living in the Hutt Valley. She’s just had a call from her boss. If she doesn’t get to her cleaning job in the city she’ll lose her contract.

The story traces less than 24 hours in the life of Sita, each short chapter identified by precise digital time from 12.14pm to 8.13am the next day, yet it portrays a lifetime in New Zealand’s underclass. Sita is one of the invisible army of workers in the brave new world of contract cleaning…
Here in Victoria, schools used to have their own cleaners as part of the staff. They were paid by the department like the teachers were, and they had sick leave and holidays and superannuation just like we did. Some of them lived onsite and were also caretakers, and most of them were handymen too. The infamous Jeff Kennett sacked them all when he became premier, inviting them to set up their own contract cleaning business. And thus began the school cleaning contract merry-go-round:
*A satisfactory quotation for the work, based on a centrally calculated number of hours per area cleaned, more hours for classrooms in daily use, less for spaces thought by bean-counters to be used less often such as the school library or a gym or computer room (all also in daily use). Cash-strapped principals took time to learn that the quotation which undercut the last one was a bad idea. They also learned that the person with whom they negotiated the contract was the owner of the business, not a cleaner, not someone to supervise the work done. Money paid to him is an expense deducted from the money available to staff the actual cleaning.
*A team of underpaid unskilled workers scamper to cover the areas to be cleaned in what is an inadequate amount of time. The school is fresh and clean for about two weeks … the workers can’t sustain the pace.
*Verbal complaints – promises to improve.
*Written complaints in a logbook – teachers learn that it is less trouble to empty a rubbish bin than it is to record that it hadn’t been emptied. But how do you record general grubbiness?
*Stains accumulate. Teachers learn to bring cleaning products and equipment from home.
*Covert negotiations with a new cleaning company so that the unsatisfactory one doesn’t decamp prematurely in a huff.
*Back to square one.
Under the radar of this merry-go-round in schools, offices and public buildings all over the country are people like Sita in Sodden Downstream.

Sita used to be employed by the company. She had the benefit of annual leave and sick pay and holiday pay. However, the laws changed according to her fellow cleaners, and they all lost their jobs. They became contractors without the annual and the sick pay and the holiday pay. Or for that matter, even the guaranteed hours beyond the most nominal. One of her colleagues blamed ‘The Hobbit’ but Sita didn’t know what he meant. That was a movie Satish wanted to see but they couldn’t afford the tickets. Her boss talked about how the new arrangements would be ‘beneficial to all’ as what he kept getting ‘told by his staff’ was that they ‘wanted flexibility’. No one recalled being asked. He didn’t give them much choice over the roster. The much vaunted flexibility was, well, more uncertainty. And a completely destroyed sleep cycle. If you couldn’t make it on a few hours’ notice, you wouldn’t get many hours the following week. (p.26)

Sodden Downpour takes place in a single day when Sita is called in to work on a day of torrential downpours. Landslides, flooding and traffic jams don’t alter the imperative. She is in no position to reject the ad hoc nature of her cleaning job. When the trains are cancelled, she has to walk…
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/12/20/sodden-downstream-by-brannavan-gnanalingam/ ( )