The Hope Factory A Novel - By Lavanya Sankaran Page 0,16

being, immediately replaced by everyday operational concerns.

As though on cue, his cellphone rang.

Anand hesitated before reluctantly touching his thumb to the screen of his iPhone.

“Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? I can’t hear you. Hello?” His father-in-law distrusted cellular technology and bellowed to compensate.

“Hello,” said Anand.

“It must be a bad line…. Right. You will be glad to know. I have organized it.” At Anand’s cautious silence, his father-in-law’s voice grew slightly more impatient. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

“Organized it?” said Anand.

“Yes. That is what I said…. The land you require for your factory…. I have set up some meetings. You come and meet me tomorrow—no, wait, I can’t tomorrow—fine, you meet me next week and I will brief you,” shouted his father-in-law before ringing off.

The second window in his office faced the factory campus, and Anand frowned at the view. This two acres—bought so very proudly just four years before, two acres for which Anand had mortgaged all he owned (which admittedly had not been very much) and taken an additional bank loan—was now too small. Orders had flooded in; Anand and Ananthamurthy had built factory sheds to the very edges of the lot; there was no further room to grow unless one counted the flower beds, the watchman’s room, and the realms that existed between the earth and the holes in the ozone layer.

“We are needing more land, sir,” Ananthamurthy had taken to saying on an almost daily basis, “especially if this Japan deal comes through and even,” he would say, “if not.”

Buying industrial land outside the city was fraught with complications, very different from the relatively straightforward process of buying property within the city through real estate agents. This, instead, was a murky business, with dubious titles and complicated family ownership histories, influenced by different mafias and forever enmeshed with inscrutable political machinery and zoning laws.

In the distance stood the neighboring property, with enormous warehouse walls, in disuse and covered with rusty metal sheets, built right up to the common compound wall, looming, entirely spoiling the vista. The factory gardener had planted an intervening hedge of bright pink bougainvillea, but this obscured only about three feet of the eyesore, which, if anything, seemed even uglier in contrast. Anand had approached his idiot neighbors, whose property stretched beyond the ugly warehouses for twenty acres, much of it in disuse and disrepair.

He had heard that they were in trouble; a pair of quarreling brothers, one prone to drink and the other to whores; they might be willing to sell. They were—and proved their reputations as business failures by quoting a price so ridiculously high and greedy, even for this city, where escalating land prices seemed a way of life, that Anand glared in disgust at the rust on their encroaching warehouse walls. May it grow, bastards, this rust, until it filters and covers all parts of your life, from your dick to your drinking glass. Behenchuths.

When Anand had bought his current two-acre site, the seller had been a friend of a friend, in financial trouble and eager to sell, with clear titles. That kind of serendipity couldn’t be counted upon—and this time, his requirements were larger. There were land brokers, of course, for this sort of purchase, but they did not advertise themselves or work without personal reference.

He had mentioned some of this, in passing, to Vidya. She had apparently conveyed it almost immediately to her father, who, naturally, had taken it upon himself to get involved in the matter.

His father-in-law’s phone call acted as a trigger. Anand mentally worked his way through a roster of friends and acquaintances who might be able to help him. His friend Vinayak claimed to know everything and everyone; he was the person to call. Anand fingered his way through the iPhone menu, forgiving its occasional telephonic inefficiency with the blind affection a parent reserves for a wayward but much-loved child.

“Vinayak?” he said. “Listen, buddy, I need your help.”

and, lest we forget …

matru devo bhava

mother is god

pitru devo bhava

father is god

athiti devo bhava

guest is god

six

IN THE LIGHT OF THE EARLY MORNING, Kamala was engaged in lecturing her son.

“So will you hurry yourself? As quickly as you can manage? Do not delay, do not engage in useless conversations with your friends, do not be distracted by anything other than the desire to please your mother and present yourself to the house in good speed.”

“I will, Mother,” said Narayan.

“And dress well! I do not want to be shamed by the rags you are so fond of