The Hope Factory A Novel - By Lavanya Sankaran Page 0,92

and go, like a beggar, and ask for money? Did you not hear what I said? That chit fund of hers is in trouble. More than you know. People are defaulting. So eager to join, greedy for the big payout, but now they find they cannot keep up with the monthly payments. She has to be ready to pay on their behalf, but she also cannot afford to, this chit fund is so big. In fact, she is so frightened, she has been asking me for money.”

“Anand-saar,” he said, after some further moments of silence.

But Kamala was already shaking her head. “Anand-saar is already giving us so much. I will not go ask for more.”

“Yes, my education, I know,” said Narayan. “But, the truth is, it is easy for them. This is not so big from their side. They can easily afford it.”

“That does not change the generosity of this gift, Narayan,” said his mother. “Or lessen its rarity.”

“They spent twenty thousand rupees just for the fireworks at the Diwali party. I heard her say so.”

“Yes, and the corner shop man spent thirty thousand on a new scooter,” said Kamala. “How does any of that affect us?”

Dissatisfaction was easy to feel and could twist the mind into unprofitable thoughts. Narayan would have to learn that lesson for himself. If he ever did. Or he would spend his entire life unhappily chasing after the shadows left by the lives of other people as though they were real.

She said: “Your education. I did not ask. He offered…. To ask for money … I have seen that, with others. It is not good. There is no self-respect in it.”

Narayan said nothing more, but the question that shone from his eyes echoed loudly around the little room: was there any self-respect in being thrown out of their home?

twenty-one

THIS WAS ONE OF THOSE MORNINGS when he rose well before the alarm. On the balcony in the cold dawn, he watched the lightening of the sky and listened to the neighborhood muezzins. They had acquired competing loudspeakers, the mosques; one maulvi’s voice had a magical, haunting quality, the other squawked self-importantly. Behind them, like so many echoes, the sounds of prayer ebbed and flowed over the awakening city, the suprabathams from the temples and, when the sun strengthened, distant bells from the Catholic church.

There was nothing left for him to do. He had fussed over the paperwork for a week. The demand drafts were ready and waiting in the safe.

He went downstairs to fetch another cup of coffee and joined his father on the verandah, where the older man was working his way through a sudoku puzzle. “I am a little surprised,” said his father, on Anand’s appearance, for this had evidently been bothering him, “that he has still not come to visit me. Or invited me to their home. It is disrespectful, is it not?”

Anand kept silent. He could not explain to his father why Harry Chinappa was maintaining an unusual distance from his daughter’s house. And why he, Anand, could not care less. Instead, he listened to his father on the subject of Ruby Chinappa, who had visited the previous day, seeking, by her nervous presence, to diffuse her daughter’s anger and atone for her husband’s distance.

“Your father is looking so well,” she had said to Anand. “So good to see him in such health. Harry is very busy right now, so many things, you know, but we really must have your father over for a meal, we really must, I will speak to Vidya about it…. Anand, are you keeping well? Is everything okay?”

“I’m fine,” Anand said, but that did not appear to reassure her. The worry in her face was tangible as she went slowly up the stairs to see her daughter, and deepened when she eventually scuttled back to her car.

Anand drank the last of his coffee. On an impulse, he told his father, “Today, I am going to register the purchase of some land … twelve acres of farmland …”

“Is it? Good, good,” said his father. “You are planning to become a farmer now?”

“Not exactly,” said Anand, wryly recognizing the real anxiety that lay behind his father’s jest. “I am buying this for the company—to expand our facilities.”

“Oh, is that so?” said his father. “In that case, be sure to avoid signing the agreements during the rahu-kaal times.”

“Rahu-kaal?” said Anand. He had never worried about scriptural notions of auspicious and inauspicious times; he could not see the sense of such