The Hope Factory A Novel - By Lavanya Sankaran Page 0,28

“Did you not hear me calling for her?”

“Amma?” said Kamala, confused.

“Shanta! Where is she? Don’t just stand there. Go and see where she is!”

Kamala went to the kitchen to do her mistress’s bidding, and then to the backyard, to the small bathroom they all shared, and then, in mounting surprise and still clutching her dusting cloth in her hand, up the side path to the front gate. “Anna,” she asked the watchman, “the mistress is looking for Shanta?”

“I saw her leave,” said the watchman, “ten minutes, thirty minutes ago. No, I have no idea where.”

“What? What nonsense!” said Vidya-ma. “What do you mean, she has left? Where to? Why did you not tell me she was leaving? How irresponsible!”

“I did not know, amma,” said Kamala. “She did not tell me.”

Thangam, when questioned, also denied knowledge of Shanta’s whereabouts. And when minutes passed and Shanta did not return, as Vidya-ma’s anger escalated, Kamala resumed her own work with a pious sense of satisfaction. After the way Shanta behaved, like some all-knowing supervisor appointed by the gods themselves to supervise lesser mortals, it was a sound moral victory to see her get into such trouble. And for dereliction of duty, no less.

Vidya-ma’s displeasure, increasingly audible through muttered comments that trailed after Thangam and Kamala, frothed over like boiling rice water when the doorbell rang and, no, it was not Shanta but her own friend, come for lunch.

“Kavika!” they heard her say in English, “I’m so sorry … my cook has vanished—the wretched cow—and I don’t know what to do…. I’m so sorry, everything’s chaotic!”

“Hey, no problem, yaar,” Vidya-ma’s friend said, “we can order something in … unless you’d prefer me to leave? We can do this another day …”

“No, no, no, no,” said Vidya-ma, visibly decompressing like a pressure cooker relieved of steam. “Yes, of course, it is no big deal…. Right, we’ll order in. You don’t mind?”

“Of course not,” said her friend. “And, Vidya! I can’t thank you enough for the clothes you sent over. My daughter will love them, they’re perfect for her.”

“Hey, no problem at all.” Vidya-ma’s smile transformed her face. “I saw them when I was shopping for Valmika and Pingu and thought they might work.”

“You’re a sweetheart,” said her friend, sitting on a ledge in the kitchen, quite at her ease, her long, jean-clad legs swinging. “Now, what should we get for lunch? How many of us are there?”

“Two of us. The children are at school, Anand’s at work,” said Vidya-ma.

“And your staff,” said Vidya-ma’s friend. She smiled at Kamala and asked in Kannada. “How many are you?”

Kamala darted a nervous look at Vidya-ma and kept silent. Thangam answered: “We are three of us, ma, including Shanta.”

“Great.” Vidya-ma’s friend proceeded to order food for five people. “Hey, do you remember how crazy we were for hariyali chicken kebabs when we were kids?”

“Especially you. You were a pig. You’d eat half the plate before the rest of us got a chance.”

“I was, wasn’t I? Well, watch out at lunch!”

Kamala stared after them, her mouth already watering.

But neither Vidya-ma nor her friend ate with great appetite; the dishes placed before them were sampled but not properly eaten by any means. They plucked at their rotis, leaving them half shredded upon their plates, the friend eating the long carrot sticks that Thangam had sliced and placed upon a plate, Vidya-ma herself talking so fast, her English speeding by at incomprehensible speed; she seemed to have forgotten the main business of the table.

Thangam did not seem surprised. “She likes to complain to this one,” she muttered.

Kamala was impressed. “Do you understand all that they are saying?”

“Certainly,” said Thangam, with some scorn. “Do you not? … She is complaining about Anand-saar.”

“That can’t be,” said Kamala. “Truly? Why?”

Anand-saar seemed to shield his wife from hardship, besides being a devoted father to his children. Did Vidya-ma not see this as a blessing? Perhaps he had some secret vice?

“No, no … nothing like that …” said Thangam, listening closely at Kamala’s urging. “He is not sympathetic to her wishes, he does not comprehend something …”

“Comprehend what?”

“I have no idea,” said Thangam, losing interest. “Tell me, who can comprehend her wishes?”

Kamala peeped at Vidya-ma’s friend when she went in with a hot roti, heated on the tava to a crisp, oily perfection. She was nice but surely as odd-looking as Vidya-ma was pretty: too thin, her gray hair cropped short like that of the old watchman at the front gate.

Later, over an expansive lunch of leftovers—chicken