The Hope Factory A Novel - By Lavanya Sankaran Page 0,61
din, the demonic lights, seemed to have been infesting his house for years. Presumably they all had places to live in, why couldn’t they just go home, motherfuckers. Vidya had positioned Anand near the garden bar with strict instructions on his responsibilities. As he dutifully propitiated guests with alcoholic libation, he restlessly scanned the gathering crowd.
Vidya was an electric force weaving through the garden, the verandah, and the adjacent drawing room; receiving guests, feeding, introducing, sparkling, laughing, her elegant dress seemingly visible at different corners of the party at the same time. She had applied a great deal of makeup on her eyes; with the newly shortened hair, her eyes looked enormous. “Vidya,” he heard friends say, “how chic!” In a matter of moments, it seemed, all the other women present were contemplating chopping off their hair and dressing their bodies as Vidya had; where did she buy her clothes? He had seen her have this impact before—there was something about hosting a party that brought out a glowing performance from her—a sparkiness, a vivacity that was entirely charming—deflecting compliments that came her way with ease, turning her large eyes and conversation to the other person, blessing him or her with the warm glow of her attention.
He too had been charmed by this, all those years ago. When had she last turned that charm, those sympathetic eyes on him? He could not remember. He hadn’t registered the slow fade of her interest till, around him, she had become the person she was today: irritable, impatient, unimpressed.
His mind, with a flush of gratitude, went back to Kavika’s factory visit: to her evident interest, her questions, the laughter. Her engagement, her open appreciation of his achievement. He had not thought her particularly good-looking when he first met her; now he could imagine no one more attractive.
“Isn’t she just beautiful?” said a voice in his ear. “Mama?” He turned to his daughter; she was standing behind him and following the direction of his gaze.
“Yes,” he said. “She certainly is. But you know who I think the most beautiful girl at the party is?” he said, with a teasing smile.
“Appa!” she said, flattered and self-conscious. “You’re just saying that. All parents think their kids look the best…. Do you think we could have some soft drinks?”
“I’ll send some over,” he promised and watched Valmika rejoin her friends. From a distance, they stood transformed into women, shedding their girlhoods, all glowing faces and sweet-bosomed curves, newly ripened, luscious, bedecked with glitter and silk and stone, endearingly shy and uncertain of their charms. Valmika, he thought, was easily the prettiest of them all. She had evidently inherited more than beauty from her mother; he watched with sudden pride as she moved between her own friends and her parents’ guests gracefully, with no hint of teenage awkwardness.
Her little brother was a fixture at the fireworks display that had started a few minutes earlier on the street. Anand had positioned him carefully, knowing Pingu’s enthusiasms and worrying about him hurting himself or others inadvertently. He was on the nervous verge of banning his son from the proceedings entirely or, at any rate, condemning him to watching the display from the safety of the garden, when Narayan had appeared to help. “I’ll be here, sir, and take care,” the boy had said, and Anand had immediately relaxed. He rushed back to the bar before Vidya could notice, his eyes beginning their restless scanning of the crowd once more.
He saw Kavika’s mother first, before he noticed her; the sudden marked similarity between the two women: their lean height, the varying shades of gray, the simple Kanjeevaram silk sarees, and the matching traditional flat ruby collars. This time, Anand didn’t wait for a gesture from his wife; he carried a glass of sherry to Mrs. Nayantara Iyer, but Kavika had already moved on, disappearing into the colored waters of the crowd.
The guests pressed around the bar; in the drowning waves of noise, Anand glanced upward to the only uncrowded space, the air that stretched and ballooned to the sky, interrupted by clouds and the fluttering leaves of trees. Someone—his wife, his father-in-law—had strung the bottlebrush tree with little fairy lights and, in a semblance of festive fun, hung elongated village dancing puppets from the branches; in the noise and the wind, the long-skirted, blank-faced puppets slowly rotated, looking like dead bodies hanging by their necks, their ghosts animating the crowds below.
Considerably later, when guests were quite comfortably finding their own way