The Hope Factory A Novel

twenty-six





KAMALA’S PLAN WAS QUITE SIMPLE. She would telephone her sister-in-law in the morning. She would explain her difficulties and ask her to intercede with her husband and arrange a loan on Kamala’s behalf. That would be better than pleading with her brother directly. Then Kamala and Narayan would catch a bus to the village and return with the money.

The consequences of such an action would be inevitable and mortifying to contemplate: a loan of such magnitude would leave her beholden for years; for the duration of that period she would have to endure her brother’s taunts and insults, as she had when she was dependent on him in the first year of her widowhood. Endure them—and perhaps never be free from them, for who knew how long it would take her to repay him?

The landlady had indicated that fifty thousand rupees, coupled with a slight increase in rent, could buy Kamala an additional year in the courtyard. The following year, Kamala would need to pay another lump sum. That was the best the landlord’s mother could do. Two additional years of schooling for Narayan—and Kamala, used to planning their lives a few months at a time, was content to trust the rest to the gods. Surely she could suffer her brother for such a cause? Dealing with Shanta these few months, she thought with a sudden deepening of amusement, had certainly been good training for what was to come.

She had forgotten to recharge her prepaid mobile phone card, so she made her call from the corner STD-ISD phone booth. It was mid-morning; her sister-in-law would have finished all her morning chores and be in a position to listen.

“Akke,” said Kamala, “I have something to ask you.” She glanced around; the door to the booth was firmly shut; Narayan, who had accompanied her, was chattering to the ISD booth man. Kamala hesitated no longer, comforted by her sister-in-law’s evident tongue-clucking sympathy. When at last her tale was done, she plucked up her courage. “Akke, I was so pleased to read of my brother’s success with the shop. I was wondering … is it possible for you to ask him for a loan?”

“Oh, little sister,” said her sister-in-law. “Thange. It is good that you have come to us for help. For years I have asked you to do so, but you have always refused and I have felt so terrible. I am glad you have asked. The thing is …” she said, and at Kamala’s soft comprehending groan, “No! Do not worry. We will contrive something. What a fate this is! What a karma. That I should urge help upon you unavailingly for years and finally, when you do ask—I am in no position to help. This is a cruel fate, indeed!”

“It is a large amount,” said Kamala. “I was a fool to think of asking.”

“Who else would you ask? You have done the right thing. The problem is that stupid shop.”

“Is it not prosperous?” asked Kamala.

“Prosperous?” Her sister-in-law began to cry. “That shop is like a hungry python, swallowing-swallowing every paisa that was ever saved in this house.”

Far from being a prosperous businessman, Kamala’s brother had growing debts and was essentially serving an indenture in the shop that would allow him to pay off all the monies he owed. “Do not tell him I told you,” said her sister-in-law. “He would be very angry with me.”

I will not, said Kamala.

“In fact, he was speaking of someday coming to Bangalore to look for some alternate employment. Do not tell him I told you.”

I will not, said Kamala.

She talked a minute more and settled the bill. She answered the impatient question in Narayan’s eyes. “Your uncle is in great debt,” she told him. “Helping us is beyond his current powers.”

They made their way slowly back to the courtyard. The landlord’s wife saw them enter and called, “Kamala-akka! Your employer’s watchman was here.”

“Is it?” said Kamala, barely listening, still digesting the phone call. “Narayan, do not wander far away. What did he want?”

“I do not know,” said the landlord’s wife. “He did not stay long. He saw the lock on your door and left.”

Kamala nodded. Telling her son to sit on the stoop, she went into her room and locked the door. There was one last thing left to do. She unlocked the steel trunk and, from the very bottom, took out a little cloth pouch and examined the contents: a small pair of gold earrings, a chain. She took off her thin gold bangles. She removed the slender gold chain from around her neck. She unscrewed the gold earrings from her earlobes. She put the jewelry she had removed into the pouch and tucked it safely in her woven plastic bag.

She examined herself in the mirror: bare of adornment, except for a black thread around her neck, and one more around her wrist to ward off evil. In the space of a minute, she was returned to the young girl who twelve years previously had stolen a bath for herself and her baby from a garden tap.

She felt bare and vulnerable, but preferred not to dwell on it. She called to Narayan and locked the room door.

“Where are we going?” He scanned her bare ears and neck and wrists.

“Hush! So many questions!” Walking down the road, she relented. “I have the name of a reliable pawnbroker, who will give us a good rate and not cheat us. We have to go to Chickpet.” The pawnbroker’s shop was in the depths of the old mercantile quarters of the city, an hour’s journey by bus.


KAMALA WAS NOT USED to Chickpet; the pawnbroker was hard to locate, and when at last they did find the shop, it was closed for the afternoon. Establishments in Chickpet, it transpired, kept old-fashioned timings: open from 10:00 to 1:00 P.M., and again from 4:00 to 8:00 in the evening. Kamala crossed to the opposite side of the road, where there was shade, and squatted on her haunches. It seemed likely, from the look of the pawnbroker’s establishment, that he lived above his shop. She doubted if he would welcome being interrupted during his lunch. She would have to wait. Any hopes she’d had of quickly finishing her work with him and salvaging a half day of work were quickly extinguished. The watchman’s visit meant that Vidya-ma was upset; perhaps there were guests for dinner that evening; perhaps Thangam was acting up and refusing to work. It could not be helped; she would not worry about it right now. Kamala gave Narayan some money to buy lunch at a nearby canteen; she herself was too anxious to eat.

The trip home in the evening seemed interminable. She felt naked without the comfort of her jewelry; the negotiation had not proceeded to her satisfaction; the amount she had received from the pawnbroker entirely inadequate. She sat silently next to Narayan on the bus, the fatigue and despair sinking so deep within her that tears slipped softly to the edges of her eyes.

At home, she crept into a corner of the room and fell into a deep sleep. When she awoke, it was the early hours of the morning; Narayan had covered her with a sheet and placed a pillow under her head in the course of the night. She looked around the room and saw his plate, newly rinsed and to one side; he had obviously managed to feed himself some dinner. Even in the repose of sleep, his face was no longer that of a small child. The gathering shadows of adulthood about him, in the gentle feathering above his lip, and in the changing smells that rose from his body.





twenty-seven





HE SPENT THE REMAINDER of the night in the study, worrying and dozing on the small sofa. In the early morning he slipped into his bedroom. Vidya did not acknowledge his presence, then or later, when he crept out of the shower. He could tell she was awake, his statement of the previous night still raw and trembling in the silence between them.

He escaped from the house, Gowdaru-saar’s threats urging him to the factory. The drive to work was agonizingly slow; some government VIP had flown in from Delhi; vehicles on all roads were stopped so that he or she or it might travel in speedy comfort to its very important destination; policemen, in their white-and-brown uniforms and squinting in the sharp early morning winter sun, fighting to hold back the steaming, frothing traffic.

At the factory, he parked the car and sat behind the wheel for a few minutes, fighting his fear. The path that led from the parking lot to his office was paved with hard-packed mud; at the last meeting with the architect, Ananthamurthy had suggested that, for the new factory, they might consider paving the paths with stone. Expensive, but smarter, he had said, Ananthamurthy, his enthusiasm making Anand smile. Paved roads that gleamed in the distance, like a mirage, now seemed to be vanishing into the mud beneath his feet.

Occasionally, Anand had daydreamed of a future where Cauvery Auto flourished to the brink of a public stock offering, where the large gifts of stock he would give to Mr. Ananthamurthy, Mrs. Padmavati, and others would secure their futures along with his. Should he tell them about the threatening phone call with Gowdaru-saar? He wasn’t sure. He worried about what it would do to their morale.

At his desk, once again, he called Sankleshwar’s office. Once again, he could not get through. He polished his glasses on the edge of his shirt and placed them on his nose. They slipped a little; he would have to get them tightened. He removed and polished them again. He tried, unsuccessfully, to immerse himself in routine matters.

His fears of the night before returned. He felt overwhelmed, powerless; these were forces outside Anand’s normal world, functioning by different rules that he barely comprehended. He needed help; he wondered who to turn to for advice.

Vinayak, in whose endless contacts might lie the answer. Anand stood at his window, watching his beloved factory floor, mastering his breath before picking up the telephone. “Hey, buddy, listen, I need your advice.”

“Oh, shit,” said Vinayak several times as Anand talked about Gowdaru-saar’s escalating demands. “F*ck, bugger, how did you get caught in this? Did you do something to piss someone off?”

Anand carefully avoided any mention of Sankleshwar.

“Or maybe someone else wants that land you are buying? See, this is why it’s damn important, yaar”—Vinayak switched to political philosophy—“to have a good relationship with politicians. Those buggers control everything; they can make or break your life. You have to build your network. And the simplest, best way to do it is by paying them off. Before every city, state election, you know what I do? I go and meet the key guys from each party personally—and promise them a certain amount. You have to do that. You have to show your support.”

“Isn’t that why we pay taxes? And vote.”

Vinayak laughed with the heartiness of someone hearing a first-rate joke. “Too funny, yaar! So, how much are you going to pay these guys? You are paying them, right?”

Anand said, reluctantly, “I can pay a certain amount if I have to—but I don’t want to bleed.”

At the end of a twenty-minute conversation, Vinayak’s advice was, ultimately, brief. “You have to talk directly to Vijayan. If you can. This fellow is his party man.”

Anand immediately knew that Vinayak was right. Sankleshwar was powerful—therefore Anand needed the help of someone even more powerful to put a stop to this.

Vinayak said: “Your father-in-law knows him, no? Vijayan? You should ask him to help, yaar, your father-in-law. That’s the best.”

You’re right, said Anand. Thanks. Good talking to you.


THE LANDBROKER SITTING IN the shadows of Anand’s office, nervy, looking for solace. “That Gowdaru-saar … He is not leaving me alone, saar,” he said. “I am not able to speak to the farmers or, in fact, to anyone else. They are following me. Even now, there are two fellows waiting outside the factory.” Anand went to the window and peered out at the distant factory gate. Sure enough, two men stood there, indistinguishable in the distance, deep in conversation with the watchman. He felt an irrational anger toward the Landbroker.

“Why did you bring them here,” he shouted. “Why to the factory?”

“I am sorry, saar,” said the Landbroker. “I was not thinking very well. I am so sorry.”

Anand instantly felt ashamed. The Landbroker was not responsible for the mess they were in; Anand was miserably aware of the irony of having worried that the Landbroker would bring in political goons when in fact they became involved through the doings of his own family.

“No, no,” he said. “Sorry for shouting. They would know where I work anyway.”

The Landbroker leaned back against the chair, his shame a palpable thing, a man with reputation and livelihood entirely at stake. If he couldn’t fight off the political forces, the five acres Anand had bought would be shockingly useless, a wasted purchase. If he couldn’t complete the deal, he would lose face with the farmers; the news that he had made promises he could not deliver on would spread through the district, the city, the state; the laughter and humiliation would chase him out. If the deal didn’t close, he would, honor-bound, be expected to pay back the sums that Anand had already paid out for the land that they could not now buy. But such sums would not be even remotely recoverable from the farmers, not immediately, not in one generation; they would have long ago vanished down the greedy gullet of farming family expenses. He would have to find the money himself, the Landbroker. That would wipe out his entire stock of fragile capital—he would be returned, in one lifetime, to a life of penury.

Anand’s “don’t worry, we’ll do something, we’ll do something” was said more to buoy the departing Landbroker’s spirits than with any real hope.


THE FIRST SIGN OF trouble occurred later that morning.

Anand, immersed in financial spreadsheets, was suddenly roused by a strange sound, which, he realized after a bemused moment, was actually the cessation of noise.

The machines were quiet.

The thrumming that drove his work life, like a mother’s heartbeat echoing through a womb, had fallen silent.

He went to the production window and stared, shocked, as rows of workers left their spots and filed toward the exit. His mind played for a desperate, foolish instant with various farfetched hypotheses—could it be a fire drill? Had his watch stopped and he’d missed hearing the lunch siren?—before accepting that it was something far more serious. His workers were downing tools, unauthorized. This was a strike. Cauvery Auto had never experienced one before.

At that moment, Mr. Kamath burst in, closely followed by the HR man and Mrs. Padmavati.

They have stopped work, said Mr. Kamath.

It is crazy, said Mrs. Padmavati.

I have no idea why, confessed the HR man.

Mr. Ananthamurthy has gone to speak to the union leader, said Mrs. Padmavati.

But the union leader is waiting outside your office. He has come to see you, said Mr. Kamath.

I have no idea why, confessed the HR man.

Let me speak to him, said Anand. Is everything calm?

Yes, they said. So far anyway.

I don’t understand, said the HR man. We have just increased their wages and all the workers seemed so happy.

The union leader who entered Anand’s office was very different from the energetic young leader Anand was used to dealing with. He looked scared and unhappy, evidently under considerable strain.

“What is it, Nagesh, what’s going on?” asked Anand, but he already knew. The labor unions had their political affiliations; the union leader Nagesh was operating under pressure from a higher domain than his particular fiefdom.

Now he would not meet Anand’s eye. “We are instructed to start work after two hours, sir,” was all he would say, but with so much misery in his face and voice that Anand could not chastise him.

This was a message to him not from the unions but from Gowdaru-saar: that he had control over Cauvery Auto’s workers. A two-hour stoppage of work today could become a full-blown strike tomorrow. And there was nothing that Anand or the union leader Nagesh or Ananthamurthy or anyone else in the factory could do to stop him.

Nothing, that is, except pay Gowdaru-saar the amount he had asked for.

Two hours later, the machines started again, as though by remote control.


IT WAS LATE EVENING; the workers were completing their last shift, in a semblance of normalcy. Anand leaned his head against the production floor window. Were they in any greater control of their fate than he was? He glanced around his office before leaving, with a feeling of doing so for the last time.

The parking lot was in a distant corner of the compound. It was slowly emptying of the cycles and scooters that filled it during the day. Buses to ferry the last-shift workers home waited at the factory gates. His car stood alone, illumined by a tall lamppost. The light seemed to bounce off the bonnet in an unusual way; as Anand approached the car he realized why.

Someone had carved a deep, vicious gash into the hood.

When questioned, the watchman was predictably blank about it. “No, saar,” he said. He had absolutely no idea how it had happened.

Anand felt people collecting behind him. “Oh my god,” said Mrs. Padmavati.

“Who can have done this? Who?” In the glassy lantern light, Ananthamurthy looked old and frail and distraught.

Anand touched the scar lightly; the surface had been cut through, leaving the metal below violated and exposed. This was meant to scare him. No doubt.

Instead, he felt something shift inside, his fear lift, a welcome anger warming him deep within.

He moved quickly; he did not want to advertise this to whoever remained on campus. He reversed and parked his car on the other side of the parking lot, the gash concealed.

When the last shift ended, he personally saw all the workers off the premises. Over their protests, he sent Mrs. Padmavati and Ananthamurthy and Kamath home. He did not want them exposed to violence—or to whatever those political goons might have planned for the long night ahead.

He was going to stay behind. He would not abandon his factory. Perhaps all would be quiet. It didn’t matter. In case of violence, he was not sure what he could do anyway, but he could not just leave. He called up the security company and asked them to send two more watchmen for the night shift.

He wondered whether to call Vidya or not but had no idea what he would say to her. They had not spoken since the previous night. Instead, he compromised, sending a text message to his daughter: Some problem here. Spending night at factory. C u tomorrow. She would let her mother know.


THE FACTORY SETTLED INTO a profound silence. Anand kept the lights on and walked endlessly around the production floor and the offices.

And as for Harry Chinappa, what had he done, really, to earn anyone’s respect? He belonged to the generation that had achieved nothing—suffocated, they claimed, by the government’s restrictive socialist policies, but, in a democracy, was that really any excuse? Theirs was the generation that had refused to look forward, gazing instead for inspiration to the British, whom their own parents and grandparents had kicked out of the country, aping their mannerisms and talking, like sighing damsels in unrequited love, of the wonder of times gone by and the marvelous organization of the British empire. Which one of them had stepped forward to embrace the freedom so hard-won, which of them had dared to contemplate empires of their own? No, much easier to mope and romanticize the past—as though the British, when in India, had invited these people to tea, torn down those signs in front of their stupid, beloved ex-colonial clubs that said: INDIANS AND DOGS NOT ALLOWED. Did he remember any of that, Harry Chinappa? Did he, in his own life, demonstrate what it took to be a man?


AT ABOUT 11:00 P.M., Anand heard a small disturbance at the front gate. He went out to the steps of the admin building. The lights blazed behind him; he knew he would be seen.

One of the security guards approached, the union leader Nagesh following. “He wanted to see you, saar,” said the guard. “He insisted.”

The union leader was alone. Anand wondered whether he was bringing a message from Gowdaru-saar. Anand let him approach, eyes restlessly scanning the darkness beyond the gate. There didn’t seem to be anyone else there, lurking in the shadows; no crowds, no goons.

“Sir, I heard you were staying here,” Nagesh said, abrupt, uncomfortable, not to be thwarted.

“I just heard about your car, sir. I wanted to say: we had nothing to do with that. We would not do that to you, sir. I came to say that.” The union leader’s concern and worry were palpable. “They are some goondas who did this. We have nothing to do with them.”

Anand nodded, concealing a huge sense of relief. The possibility of his own workers turning against him had worried him more than anything.

The union leader seemed reluctant to leave. He blurted out: “Sir, are you planning to spend the night?”

“Yes,” said Anand. “I am.” He frowned. “Why, have you heard anything? Are they going to do something?”

“No, sir, I have not heard,” said the union leader. “They would not tell me even if they were planning something. But, sir,” he said, “you should not wait here alone.”

“I am not alone,” Anand spoke firmly. The three security guards waited at the entrance. “If anyone comes, rest assured, I will call the police.”

He turned to go in and found the union leader hard at his heels.

“I will wait here with you, sir,” said the young man.


THEY SET UP TWO chairs on the factory shop floor. The union leader organized some coffee, and Anand unearthed the glucose biscuits from Kamath’s stockpile. “Hopefully there will be no trouble,” Anand said. “But I am glad you are staying, Nagesh. Thank you.”

“No need to thank me, sir,” the union leader said, with a great seriousness of purpose. “I was thinking about today. I did not like that. Having to stop work because it suits some political party. I was thinking: how does this benefit us working on the floor? If we lose our jobs, will the politicians give us another? No. They will not. That is why I am here, sir. If the company suffers, we all suffer. We can’t let that happen.”

Conversation came naturally between them, the odd circumstances of the night breaking through barriers. Nagesh eagerly shared his life story: he was the oldest son and great hope of his family, the first to complete schooling, the first to finish his technical training, now bent on ensuring good marriages for his sisters; himself the father of two young children whose cellphone pictures Anand duly admired.

Anand, in turn, talked of his early years—and went from there to discussing his ideas for the new plant. He described the shop floor of his dreams, one drawn from a real-life visit that he and Ananthamurthy had made to a stampings plant that supplied a rigorous Japanese car company. They had followed the famous Toyota Production System, and Anand described in detail to the union leader what he’d seen: just-in-time processes; the kaan-baan system; the unidirectional flow of work through the shop floor; the increased automation; and the detailed training that each worker received. “You will not believe,” he said. “They supply fresh batches of sheet metal pressings to the main car factory every twenty minutes. Can you imagine? Every twenty minutes, made to order!”

“This is in Japan, sir?” Nagesh said, wide-eyed at the notion of such efficiency.

“No,” said Anand. “This is right here. In Bangalore.”

“Sir, do you think someday we might do so as well?”

“I hope so, Nagesh. I hope so. Certainly the new factory will be a step in that direction.”


THE NIGHT WAS TROUBLE-FREE, as Anand had suspected it might be. The two-hour strike and the damage to his car were Gowdaru-saar’s way of indicating future possibilities. A negotiating point, nothing more.

In the late nocturnal quiet, he found himself wandering about the deserted shop floor. When he was a child, his family would make vacation trips to see the temples of South India. It was a habit he’d continued with his own children: driving out and letting them explore. The family usually followed some guide who would ramble on about the religious symbolism and cultural history of the temples, but Anand would trail after them lost in the wonder of his own contemplations. For him, to visit Pattadhakal was to witness not only the genesis of stone temple architecture but a laboratory, where cutting-edge design and engineering excellence were birthed over a thousand years before. And so he would wander, through Pattadhakal, through the cave temples at Badami, through the Meenakshi temple at Madurai, marveling at the craftsmanship and technical skills that had engineered miracles. And that, ultimately, was what spoke to the depths of his soul: a desire to belong to a people who, once again, reclaimed their ability to engineer objects of great beauty, form, and purpose. Who stood for perfection. Who knew what it was to toil, to craft, to construct things of truth and excellence that made onlookers gawk in wonder.

The machines, silent sentinels, the crates of finished metal pressings, the young union leader dozing on a chair. So much depended on his, Anand’s, ability to save this place.

No matter what the cost to his pride. Vinayak was right.

He would have to call Harry Chinappa.

Harry Chinappa, who had so painstakingly cultivated Vijayan, who would be able to put a stop to Gowdaru-saar’s demands. Harry Chinappa, who single-handedly had created the trouble they were in and then behaved as if Anand were to blame.