The Hope Factory A Novel - By Lavanya Sankaran Page 0,58

that sounds …”—as though she had not spent several years enjoying a tide of newly flashy-splashy celebrations, parties, late nights, card games, gifts, decorations, and delirious spending; the festal name itself shortened to Diwali in some weird Bollywoodized fashion—and Anand forced himself to speak up—“We used to have really simple Deepavalis when I was a child”—and felt Kavika’s eyes focus on him.

“In Mysore?” she asked. “Ah! Beautiful city.” She frowned in thought. “What are you, a Hebbar Iyengar?”

No, he said, “Smartha Brahmin.”

“Oh,” she said, “like us Iyers!”

“Well, similar, though with some differences.” Tongue-in-cheek and reveling in his own daring, he said, “My uncle used to say: ‘For a restful, headache-free life, never marry an Iyer woman—too aggressive!’ ”

Her shout of laughter was drowned by Vidya’s shocked “Anand! … How rude!” Vidya firmly returned to the original topic. “We should really go back to that, shouldn’t we? I mean, the simpler things of life. In the craziness of our lives we sometimes forget the joy of those simple traditions.”

Now, how was Vidya to reconcile this with the lavish party that Harry Chinappa liked to throw at his daughter’s house at his son-in-law’s unhappy expense?

In the study, she plucked nervously at her toes like an outgeneraled Mughal ruler who, flanked by the Portuguese, accepted the help of the British and rather lived to regret that decision, saying of her father: “Ey, you know how he likes to help us with these things. And I know he has already gone ahead with many of the arrangements.”

Anand refused to slip into the old, established mechanics of their marriage and rush to her rescue. Provoked by a burgeoning new obstinacy, he said: “You like his help, no? You are always saying.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, refusing to be disloyal. “Of course I do.”

“You should tell him, yaar,” he said. “Tell him you want to keep it simple this year.”

“Yes. That’s a good idea,” she said, getting up. “I will.” He watched her leave, trailing indecision and strategy behind her.

He promptly forgot about the matter, his own mind utterly distracted by the prospect of the following day.

Kavika was to visit the factory, to collect another contribution to the children’s education fund that she was working on with Amir and Amrita. “If you don’t mind,” she’d said over the telephone. “I have to swing by that side anyway to fund-raise at a garment factory. The owner promised me a check a long time ago and I’m going to squeeze it out of him.”

“Please come,” Anand had said, formally, hiding his extreme delight.

She was to arrive at 11:00 A.M., and he had planned to clear his desk before that and possibly run a comb through his hair. Instead, immersed in work, he was on the telephone, wrestling in prayer and remonstrance with his steel supplier, when he saw her at his door.

“Anand! Thank you so much for this,” she said when he had finished his phone call. Her eyes swiveled to the picture window. “Oh, wow.” She stood riveted by the sight of the factory floor. “You know what? I’ve been in a thousand offices—but I’ve never actually visited an industrial factory before…. This is amazing.”

He joined her at the window, heat rushing to his face at her evident, unexpected interest.

“Would you like a tour?” he asked, surprise making him cautious, delight making him shy.

“Really? Now?” she said. “Wow. Are you sure? You don’t mind? That would be very cool.”

“No problem, yaar,” said Anand, with a sense of masterly understatement.

HE LED HER DOWNSTAIRS. She walked by his side along the yellow lines that marked pathways separating the rows and columns of machinery. He had made her wear a hard hat, like he did, and he paused at every turning to make sure there was no wayward forklift operator or worker with a trolley of raw materials heading toward her. He would not risk her safety.

“We don’t make a very complicated product,” he said, self-deprecatingly. She stood very close to him; she had to in order to hear his words over the noise of the machinery. A gap of mere inches. He took her through the process, his explanation growing with enthusiasm when he saw that she was really interested; she was not just being polite, her breath feathering his cheek when she leaned in to ask questions, her hand occasionally touching his arm to make a point.

They wandered together through the sunlit factory to where sheets of steel were pressed by the dyes within the stamping machines into a