The Hope Factory A Novel - By Lavanya Sankaran Page 0,48

children clamored. “You know it does.”

“You’re right,” he said and settled himself on the grass, the children ranged about him, opening another can of a cold, aerated drink, feeling the sugar swell the sense of well-being within him. As they ate, he competed with them in telling silly jokes. Two peanuts were walking down the street and one was a salted. What did the fish say to the greedy prawn? You’re so shellfish. And their favorite: about the man who had an abscess in his bottom and whose breaking wind sounded like a Japanese car manufacturer, for an abscess makes the fart go Honda.

After a while his daughter asked, with a casual air, “So, do you think I could go to that party tonight? All my friends are going …”

“Hasn’t Mama already said no?” Anand shook his head. “Then don’t ask again, kutty, I don’t like it.”

“All my friends are going,” she said again but stopped when she saw his expression. When next she spoke, it was on a different topic. “Appa, what happened at the factory that day? The export thing?”

“Oh,” he said, surprised that she even remembered. “Yes, I think it went well.”

“That’s good,” she said. “You’re going to export now?”

“No,” he laughed. “Not yet. It’s not that simple. There will be more meetings and so on, it may take them months to decide, so we will have to see.”

“Eat some of the chicken,” she said now, her tone motherly. “It’s delicious, try some.” He let her fill his plate. “Come on,” he said, “you eat too, before Pingu eats up the entire picnic.”

There was a time when she would reach eagerly for her food, ignoring the admonishments of her mother to go slow, but she was suddenly at an age where she seemed to weigh every mouthful she ate, computing its worth in terms of calories and god-knows-what-all other fashionable parameters of nutrition offered by the women’s magazines that his wife flooded the house with. Anand watched her assess the picnic, choose small spoonfuls of chicken and vegetables, and eat slowly, bite by careful bite, and he worried: was it enough?

So much of his daughter was snared in inexplicable female mystery, and even though he seized gladly on the fact that she continued to chatter away to him as much as she ever did, there were still lines between them, newly formed, that neither could cross. When she argued with her mother, for instance. The topics seemed to him very silly and trivial, certainly not worth the tears or angry faces, but he never dared point that out to either of them. Or when, once a month, he saw her prostrated upon her bed, a cushion clutched to her belly to ease the pain that attacked her abdomen. He never knew what to do. Should he step up as he naturally would if she had scraped her knee and sit by the side of the bed offering comfort and concern and busy himself with pills and prescriptions and worried phone calls to the doctor, or would it embarrass her if he did?

His concern stretched to other things too. There were times when he overheard conversations or read articles on how Indian teenagers—especially well-to-do urban ones—were changing, worryingly, into facsimiles of their Western counterparts.

“Are you talking to her?” he asked his wife. “About drugs and sex and alcohol and so on?”

“Of course not,” she said. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I mean,” he explained, “about whether these things are happening in her school. Her friends.”

Vidya looked troubled.

“Anand,” she said. “Valmika is just fourteen. And she’s a good girl. She is not going to go near things like that. Neither are her friends, I think. We know all their families.”

But wasn’t that what all parents thought, he’d asked—and yesterday Vidya had said, “Oh, yes, I talked to her. Or actually, Kavika talked to her for me, and it is the same thing.”

Anand did not know whether to feel relieved or awkward.

The garden doors opened; his wife had returned home. She said: “What on earth are you guys doing?”

And behind her, another voice, amused: “Ah. Déjeuner sur l’herbe. What fun!”

“Appa gave me permission, Mama. Hi, Kavika-aunty,” said Valmika. “That’s French, isn’t it?”

“It is,” said Kavika. “The name of a painting, actually. Hi, Anand.” He looked up from where he had been staring blindly—at his wife hugging Pingu; he smiled; he tried to think of something to say.

“Hi,” he managed. If he could remember the French phrase she’d used, he would look up