The Hope Factory A Novel - By Lavanya Sankaran Page 0,21

this position that she was discovered by Vidya-ma. “Kamala! What is the meaning of this!

“How can one rest while others toil? On a day like this, when all have so much to do. Even I have not stopped for a second, no, not even paused for a drink of water, but you! Relaxing like a queen. I cannot believe this! Such a nerve! If you are not interested in this work, why don’t you just go home now?”

Kamala stood up. She placed her teeth on her lip to control the quivering and kept her eyes lowered. Vidya-ma’s ankles were covered by her jeans, but her naked foot peeked out, soft and scrubbed, with toenails painted a jewel red.

They had quickly collected a small audience, freshly arrived for their lunch: Kamala could sense the triumph in Shanta’s face, the eager curiosity in Thangam’s, the nervous fright in the driver’s wife, and, just beyond, Narayan, his eyes worried and angry.

Vidya-ma, spleen emptied, turned her attention to Shanta. “So, what did you want me to see?” The cook led her meekly to the table where the tablecloths and napkins lay ready for inspection. “Yes, that one,” Vidya-ma said impatiently. “I already told you so this morning.”

She left and the frozen tableau relaxed—Thangam and the driver’s wife went to the sink to wash their hands; Shanta patted the stacks of napkins in some satisfaction; and Kamala walked out of the kitchen to squat in the courtyard, angry tears rolling down her cheeks. She felt her son’s arms about her shoulders.

“So mean!” he said, in an angry whisper. “How could she do such a thing!”

“I tell you. She is like that!” said Kamala.

“It is the height of meanness. Especially when you have been slaving all day long.”

“Yes,” said Kamala, comforted. “It is.”

“Could she not see that you were not well? Your sickness is written upon your face.”

“She is not one to see anything that does not suit her.”

“Then why must you work here? I do not like it, Mother!”

Kamala was touched. She pushed her son’s hair back off his forehead. “There will always be someone like her, you know. In any job.”

“But you have never said anything about it! From your words, I thought she was nice!”

Kamala stared at him. “When did I say so! I have always cursed that she-demon, Shanta.”

“Not Shanta!” said Narayan. “Vidya-ma. She’s not nice. She’s mean! She does not care.”

Kamala was shocked. “No, Son. Don’t say that. It is all Shanta’s fault. She is the one who brought her down here, on purpose to get me into trouble. She is a she-demon, that one.”

Narayan shut his mouth, but his face still carried doubt.

seven

THE NEW HUMAN RESOURCES MAN had him cornered, pinning Anand to his desk with stratagems—“We should take, sir,” the HR man’s eyes were alight with mad sociological schemes that raised his hair in little black and gray tufts behind his ears, “the entire management to off-site. There is a place near Mysore which is having very good facilities for off-site. Rope climbing, coracle racing.” Anand regarded him doubtfully; he had hired the Human Resources manager to handle things like pay and perks and absenteeism; this man spent all his energies organizing picnics.

“Very good for bonding, sir,” said the HR man. “For teambuilding.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Anand.

“Oh, very good, sir.” The HR man seemed to take this for unabashed consent. “I will organize…. And there is a candidate here for that post of systems engineer. Mr. Ananthamurthy has seen him, and he requests you also to please interview. You are able to see him?”

Anand hesitated. He had a myriad list of things to do, but the expanding factory fattened steadily on a diet of new employees, and Anand gained a quiet pleasure from the quality of people who were beginning to seek employment with them. “Okay,” he said. “Quickly.”

He glanced at the day’s headlines. THE LOK AYUKTA ANTI-CORRUPTION RAID YIELDS TWO CRORES IN BRIBES.

STRAY DOGS ATTACK FOUR-YEAR-OLD CHILD, BUT STILL TOLERATED. “It is not in our Hindu culture to kill animals,” said a neighboring resident.

VIJAYAN—NEW HOPE FOR INDIAN POLITICS? with a photograph of the politician in question waving from a podium.

In the frivolous party pages, there was a photograph of his friend Vinayak, looking pleased and cool and prosperous at an art auction and, on the same page, Anand’s father-in-law, clutching a glass of gin and tonic with vulpine satisfaction. Harry Chinappa’s hooded eyes were ringed by dark dissipation; with his artificially blackened hair and his prominent hooked