The Hope Factory A Novel - By Lavanya Sankaran Page 0,31
tumbler that Kamala soon held to her lips, wiping tears that flowed from a swollen eye. “He needed money,” she said. “I gave him all I had, but that was not enough.” She swallowed the pill and closed her eyes, her head lolling against the wall. Her hand, holding tight to Kamala’s, would not let go.
Thangam dropped her bucket and brooms in a noisy clatter when she saw the scene in the kitchen. “Oh, that sinner!” she said. “That rakshasa-spawn!”
At that moment, the front doorbell pealed. “That must be Vidya-ma! Quick,” said Thangam. “Hurry yourself, Kamala sister; you answer the door and I will help Shanta into the back room; Vidya-ma must not see this …”
Kamala pushed the brooms that Thangam had dropped to one side and hastened to the door. Vidya-ma looked displeased. “What is the meaning of this delay?” she said. “I wondered if my entire household had vanished along with Shanta.”
Kamala was relieved to hear Thangam’s voice behind her. “She has returned, amma.”
“Oh, is it? Well, where is she? … Resting? Why is that? First, she takes a holiday without permission, then … what, is this a dharamshala?”
“She has had an accident, ma,” said Thangam. “On the road … She meant to absent herself for just ten minutes to purchase some medicine, then met with an accident. A scooter banged into her, she fainted, went to the hospital, and now she is back.”
“Let her rest, then,” said Vidya-ma. “You will have to cook until she is better, Thangam … though hopefully she will be well enough to cook for the guests on Wednesday evening. But why should she go anywhere without permission?”
Thangam and Kamala maintained a prudent silence.
THE HARSH BLUE MORNING SKY was curtained by evening with cooling gray clouds, ponderous and heavy, timing their guttered waterfall for the precise moment when Kamala was to walk home. She dithered reluctantly for a few minutes before venturing forth, a large plastic shopping bag cut open on one side and placed over her head. She would be soaked through, but after such a day she was desperate to return to her own home.
The rain embraced her as she stepped out, fat drops slapping against the plastic on her head and clinging to her saree at her hips. Kamala concentrated on where she placed her feet; the clouds had eliminated twilight, plunging the world straight into the dark of night, barely illumined by the weak light of the distant streetlamp, and she did not want to slip on the broken pavements, their jagged edges angled, waiting, treacherous.
A shadow moved next to her. There stood Narayan, holding an umbrella proudly. “I thought you might be returning home now.” He placed a protective arm about his mother’s shoulders, holding the umbrella over her head.
“Where did you get this, child?” she asked, amazed. “To waste money on such a thing!”
“It was available cheap, Mother. At that corner shop,” he said. “It folds up and you may carry it every day in your bag…. Have you heard the latest news? You will never guess!”
She would have kissed him if he was but a little younger; she contented herself with listening to his chatter, relishing the warmth of the arm that held her close.
“What news? Tell me. I cannot guess. Very well then … Did that Ganesha trip over a stone and break his leg? … No? Perhaps the landlord’s wife has delivered twins…. No? Well then?”
“That Chikkagangamma who lives opposite has been captured by a ghost!” Narayan nodded at his mother. “Do not look so disbelieving—she was seized by the ghost in the middle of the night—her own children told me so!”
“What, those two little fools? They are seven and eight years old, what do they know of ghosts?” Chikkagangamma was a shiftless woman who combined an inability to hold jobs with certain morally dubious proclivities that Kamala would not consider discussing with her son.
“In the middle of the night, the ghost entered her body; she began to scream and vomit and act very strange…. Their uncle came in the morning and whisked her away, while you were at work. He told them that he would be taking her to a temple so that the priest could say the right prayers to drive the ghost away!”
This astonishing story was later confirmed around the neighborhood—and just when Kamala began to ponder the possibilities of the vengeful ghost, freed by prayer from Chikkagangamma’s brain, searching for a new soul to possess and lighting on Kamala or