The Hope Factory A Novel - By Lavanya Sankaran Page 0,105

or not done? Why should I care about such a topic? Of what slightest interest is it to me?”

“Oh, for the sake of the gods!” said Thangam, entering the fray. “Is it not possible to eat a meal here in silence and peace? And, if I were you,” she told Kamala, “I would worry less about my health and more about my son’s companions.”

“What do you mean?” asked Kamala.

“I saw him yesterday. Hanging around with that lout Raghavan and his friends. I went to collect a payment, and he was loitering with them. I am surprised to see him in such company. They are not good men, Kamala,” said Thangam. “You should tell him that. I am surprised you have not already done so. You take such pride in him.”

Kamala put away her plate in silence, upset to hear her own thoughts echoed by Thangam. Was this what everyone thought? That because Narayan hung about with Raghavan and his crowd, he was like them in character?

When her son arrived at the kitchen door that evening, Kamala was happy to see that Thangam’s attitude to him remained cordial. She welcomed him, and when Vyasa discovered him and wanted to take him upstairs to his bedroom to show him something, she was the first to encourage him.

“Let him go up,” she said, when Kamala hesitated. Narayan had never been allowed upstairs in the house. “Pingu cannot bring that huge train set down.”

Kamala followed her son and Pingu up the stairs with a pile of ironed clothes but could not help feeling uncomfortable at the expression in Vidya-ma’s eyes when they encountered Narayan on the landing. Her mistress did not look at all pleased at the intrusion.

twenty-five

THE MEETING WITH GOWDARU-SAAR and the realization of what Harry Chinappa’s careless, self-serving lies had thrown his way unleashed an unprecedented anger that propelled Anand through his home in a great, all-consuming silence. The fat house, overbuilt, overspent; the mechanisms by which it had been created, the human infrastructure of his entire life; all existed, it seemed, to oppress him. He lived mute within it, his silence punctuated by the angry mutterings of his wife and watched in gathering bewilderment by his daughter.

Valmika saw something in his face that she had never seen before, and worked up the courage one morning to ask, “Appa, what’s wrong?”

They were headed into Cubbon Park. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing, kutty. Come on.” They stretched perfunctorily before starting to run. His legs stretched farther today, moving lightly over the ground, feeling an old, forgotten power for the first time in years. At the corner, he glanced back, but Valmika had been keeping pace with him.

There she was. Kavika. In the distance, holding the leash of her mother’s aging dog. He felt like running right up to her, shouting at her for her obliviousness, grabbing her arm, pulling her to the car, and driving away with her. Somewhere.

He accelerated, leaving Valmika behind, and came to a despairing halt in front of her. Kavika’s cheerful hello seemed unaffected both by his fevered fantasies and by whatever stories his wife was feeding her. “This guy,” she said, bending and fondling the dog’s long ears, “would lose a race with a turtle.”

Her eyes roamed his face; her voice was friendly, kind. “Anand,” she said. “Amir told me something in confidence. About your company. It really worried me …”

He couldn’t speak. Valmika had reached them and was sucking in shuddering gasps of breath. She fell to her knees, and Anand suddenly felt ashamed. He tried to speak to her cheerfully: “You ran really well, kutty. Great job!”

Kavika waited until Valmika had recovered her breath. She said: “Sweetie, do you think you could just ramble about with this fellow for a few minutes while I talk to your father? Thank you! And don’t go too far, stay within our sight all the time.” She turned back to Anand. “Amir told me that you were being pursued by some political goon for money…. Is that true? Are you okay?”

Anand sat on the grass and started talking, telling her, freely, easily, of everything that had happened. He was no raconteur; the narrative was bald and shorn of decorative detail, but she listened with an attentive sympathy that pulled the words out of him. He started with the land investment; he was soon speaking about Harry Chinappa with an honesty that he had never before managed with anyone. He knew that he could trust her, that she would not go running