The Hope Factory A Novel - By Lavanya Sankaran Page 0,7
worry. He knows what I was doing; he is now my friend. Don’t worry so, it’s nothing wrong.”
And, trying her patience no further, he told her: he had spent the day selling magazines and newspapers to vehicles that halted at the traffic lights on the main road. “It works like this,” he said. “The agent for the area gives us a full ten percent for selling magazines, and for some, even fifteen, twenty percent. And, Amma, I am really good at this; even the policeman said so. After just two hours I was selling as much as the senior boys who have been doing this for a long time.”
“And that useless street-rascal Raghavan also did this? He sold magazines?”
“Yes. Actually, he was the one who told us about it. But after a while, he went off to see a movie. I kept at it the entire day!” Narayan counted out the money he had made—it was almost a hundred rupees. “Do you see?” he said, gloating. “If I do this every day, Amma, I can earn as much as you do in a month!”
Kamala had not anticipated something like this. That her son, her little Narayan, should find out this clever way of making money and then proceed to do so very well at it—and not let himself be distracted by those louts who went off to the movie. The money he had made was not insignificant at all, not a sum she could dismiss. If what he said was true, if he could indeed sell these magazines so well—it made her mind spin giddily with the notion of suddenly having twice as much money at her disposal and the great easing of burden that would bring. But hard on the heels of such fantasy came a sobering reflection: if she let Narayan get seduced by such earnings today, then she would seal his fate; he would give up his hated studies immediately and settle into selling magazines for the rest of his life. There would be no school, no English, no office.
She paused a moment more, fighting the temptation of money. She met the brightness of her son’s eye with a smile and bit back her uncertainty. “It is a wonderful thing you have done,” she said. “The little Lord Krishna, with all his mischief and cleverness, could not have done better!”
“Tomorrow, I am going to go extra early,” he said, “and make still more.”
“You may do so,” she said, “and again the day after, for it is the weekend. But on Monday, you will have to go back to school.”
“But, Mother …” he said, aghast at her foolishness.
“No, Narayan,” she said. “You cannot be selling things on the roadside your whole life. Do you not want to learn to speak English nicely and then get a job where you will make much more money?”
“I can speak English,” he said indignantly, and demonstrated by saying in that language: “I speaking English. I speaking English very good.”
She laughed. “See?” he said, encouraged. “I do not have to go to that stupid school to learn that. I can speak Hindi and Tamil too; I have even learned a few words of Telugu.” This was true; her son had, over the course of his life, magically absorbed these languages right through the pores of his skin from the very air in the city, which throbbed and thrummed with the spoken words of people from all over the world.
But she would not let his linguistic facility change her mind: Narayan must complete his schooling.
three
THE COMPOUND WALL OF HIS HOUSE stood tall, white, unadorned, and forbidding. When they had finally been able to afford the land, Anand had imagined a small, neat house with a large garden, his mind fondly resting on the old-fashioned Lakshmipuram bungalows in Mysore with their monkey-top gables and sloping roofs, but his wife had thrown her hands up in horror, oh, dear lord, no, let’s have a modern aesthetic for goodness’ sake, and since he knew nothing of such matters, he acquiesced and found himself with a sharp-angled house that seemed far too large for their needs. Far too large, certainly, for his: an overweight, cantilevered structure coyly trying to squeeze itself into a space several sizes too small, bursting at its plotular seams, almost spilling over onto the neighbors, leaving room for a small patch of grass in front and little else, sucking up air and space and whatever financial resources he could muster. Each month, Anand diligently