The Hope Factory A Novel

twenty-nine





THE FIRST TEXT MESSAGE FROM Valmika said: Pls call mama necklace trouble. The second, sent minutes after the first, said: call!!!!

Anand checked his phone. There were no missed calls from his wife.

Around him, the noise of the factory resonated reassuringly. The machines were running; administrative staff were filing in. Kamath had arrived early, his concern evident as he surveyed his unshaved, sleep-deprived boss.

“Don’t worry, Kamath,” said Anand. “Everything will be fine. Don’t worry.”

He projected a similar confidence to Ananthamurthy. He did not want his team demoralized further. He himself desperately wanted a bath, to cleanse his mind and spirit with buckets of hot water. A bath, and something to eat.

He didn’t want to return home for either.

He received Valmika’s messages as he walked out to the car. He called her—but he didn’t have to ask why she was calling. Over his daughter’s nervous, thankful “Appa?” he could hear Vidya’s voice in the background, crying, hysterical, shouting. “I’ll be there,” he told his daughter. “Kutty, I’m leaving right away. I’ll be there.”


VALMIKA MET HIM AT the entrance of the house. He placed a comforting arm about her, this beautiful girl, his daughter, already taller than he was, with Harry Chinappa’s genes unfolding inside her. “It’s that necklace,” she said. “Appa, there was a huge uproar this morning.”

That seemed to be an understatement. His arrival appeared to trigger a Brownian motion of people about the house. Thangam and Shanta came tumbling down the stairs and scurried into the kitchen. His father emerged from his bedroom to say, “Something has happened … I don’t know what….”

“Kutty, what is it?” He could see Valmika hesitating, not used to broaching discussions about her parents’ affairs. “It’s okay,” Anand encouraged her gently. “Tell me what happened.”

“That necklace,” she said. “Mama has been … sick … in bed….” He could see the tears rising in her eyes.

“It’s okay, tell me. Mama has been upset, I know….”

“Yes. And yesterday, the necklace went missing. Remember? From Thatha’s family, really old, priceless. I’m not sure, I don’t know why, maybe the other maids said something, but when Kamala came to work this morning, Mama shouted at her. Something about Narayan taking it—and, Appa! Kamala got so angry.… She shouted back at Mama. She picked up an empty water glass and threw it against the wall. Even Shanta screamed. Then she left the house, and Mama …”

Ruby Chinappa appeared on the landing. They had spoken with each other on the telephone early that morning, but they had not discussed her daughter at that time. Now, she did not seem to know how to proceed. “Oh, Anand,” she said and burst into tears. He pushed past her into the bedroom.

The shouting he had heard over the phone had died down. Vidya had subsided into silence. She was sitting in bed, still wearing the same T-shirt and pajamas he had seen her in two nights ago, surrounded by snot- and tear-filled tissues. Her features appeared dead, drowned, distended. She would not look directly at him.

Out of the corner of his eye, Anand could see his daughter and mother-in-law at the door. He asked Valmika, softly, “Where is Pingu?”

“School,” his daughter whispered. “I thought he should go.”

“Good girl,” he said. “Kutty, why don’t you take Avva downstairs and ask Shanta to make a cup of tea for her before she goes home. Ask Thangam to bring one for Mama as well. Also, ask her to bring a broom and sweep up this mess.”

Anand turned to Vidya. He sat down on the edge of the bed. He didn’t know what to say. His insides felt like rough gravel after the events of the previous day; he wished he could turn and walk out.

“The necklace went missing?” An obvious question, tentatively uttered, in lieu of all the other unresolved quarrels that lay between them.

“F*ck the necklace,” she said. Flat-voiced. “If she took it, let her keep it. Who gives a shit?”

He had spoken the truth two nights previously—and part of him still exulted, whooping rebelliously, in the freedom. Another part, which had supported this relationship for fifteen years, knew the hurt his words had inflicted.

“Ey,” he said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that to you. I’m sorry.”

She met his eyes finally. “I’ve done my best by you, Anand.” But the sharp doubt was in her, he could see that, razor-edged, slicing through her self-respect, the rationale for her entire adult life.

“I know. I know…. We’ve built some good things together…. And you’re a good mother. Ey, don’t cry.” His inarticulate words tugged the tears out of her; she cried like a woman abandoned. He placed a hand on her back and rubbed gently, an old, comforting gesture he had not used in a long while.


HIS CHILDREN. HIS DAUGHTER, so caring, so worried, and his son, a laughing ball of trust. To regret his marriage was to regret his children, and he could not do that.

Anand had never thought of his emotional needs when he was younger; now, years too late, he was seeing the gaps in his existence, but it was knowledge he could not act upon. To walk away, to reach for his own personal happiness would be at the expense of theirs. His children. His silly mother-in-law. His father, resting downstairs.

That decision descended heavily upon him; he felt the squeezing pain of it and an instant corresponding doubt—would he be strong enough to shoulder it for the rest of his life?

“Don’t worry,” he said to Vidya. “Everything will be okay. And we will find that necklace. Don’t worry.”

Her sobs slowly settled into hiccups. Valmika brought a cup of tea and helped Thangam sweep up the pieces of the broken glass. Vidya drank her tea, Anand sitting on the bed next to her. After a while, she slept.

Anand joined his daughter for breakfast.

“Let Mama sleep for a while,” he said. “She’ll feel better.” He saw his daughter’s relieved acceptance of his words, her attention turning hungrily to the food on the table. He watched her eat. A bite of toast. Forkfuls of scrambled egg. “Oh, and, Appa,” she said, when she was done. “I helped Thatha organize stuff for his pooja.”

“Oh, great, kutty,” he said. “That’s a big help…. Now, shall I drop you to school?”

“No, I hate going late,” she said, heading up to the stairs. “And I won’t miss much; we’re spending most of our days rehearsing for the school play. I’ll stay here and do some maths revision for my test tomorrow.”

The day’s newspaper lay folded on the dining table.


EARLY THIS MORNING, HE had called Harry Chinappa from the factory.

Harry Chinappa had ignored the first phone call, made to his cellphone. Anand, full of a steady purpose, had dialed again. His house this time.

Ruby Chinappa had picked up the phone. “Anand!” she said, her voice full of false cheer. “I was just saying that we have not seen you in some time….”

“Is he there?” he asked. “Can I speak to him?”

He could hear the loud whispering in the background, Ruby Chinappa saying: “… you must talk to him! You cannot ignore him forever … so awkward…. No, I don’t think it is something to do with Vidya, he would have told me.” When she came back to the phone, her voice wobbled with effort: “Anand,” she said, “he is in the bathroom, can’t speak now…. Yes, of course, call back….”

Anand waited fifteen minutes, working on his resolution.

When he called for the third time, Harry Chinappa came on the line. Anand had vaguely rehearsed a speech in his mind, calm and clear and convincing. Something about putting aside their differences and working for the good of the company and the family future.

Instead, he found himself saying, brusquely and without preamble: “You must help me.”

“What?” said Harry Chinappa, outrage evident in his voice.

Anand blurted out his story, speaking with a dreadful urgency, almost forgetting, in his haste, the implacability of the man at the other end of the telephone. Harry Chinappa waited for Anand to stop speaking.

“No,” he said.

“You cannot say no,” said Anand. “Did you not hear me? This is the result of your actions. You have to help.”

His insistence triggered a rush of words from Harry Chinappa: No, he said again, he bloody well would not help. Who did Anand think he was, speaking to him like that? After making a fool of him, Harry Chinappa, he now had the impudence, the temerity, to ask for help again?

“Please.” Anand belatedly shifted to pleading and hated himself for doing so. “Please.”

No.

The phone call ended; Anand found himself trembling in revulsion. In the quelling of their hapless mutiny, in retribution for their massacre of English women and children, the Indian sipahis were made to lick the bloody floor of the massacre site before being shot alive out of British cannons. Anand could taste the blood of that floor in his mouth, feel his own impending annihilation, his body and spirit rending in the fast-speeding wind and fire, his life’s work collapsing into rubble.


ANAND CAREFULLY UNFOLDED the newspaper, not really looking at it. He sipped at coffee; he could not eat anything. His hands were trembling, he noticed, quite disconnected from his brain. Everything—the night, the phone call with Harry Chinappa, the scene with his wife—pressed into him like the pleated bellows of an accordion, filling him with heavy breath and aching teeth and little else. He felt voided. Of ideas, of hope, of desire, of thought. He was nothing.

The headline ate at his eyes. VIJAYAN ADDRESSES INDUSTRY LEADERS.

The words reconfigured themselves in front of him, dancing, calling. Clapping their hands. Shouting. Dancing. He went to the little powder room and cupped his hands under a stream of cold water, running it over his wrists, touching chill, wet fingers to his eyes. Then he returned to the paper.


VIJAYAN ADDRESSES INDUSTRY LEADERS. The subheading said: INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION IS THE WAY FORWARD FOR THE COUNTRY, TO COMPETE WITH CHINA, TO RAISE STANDARDS OF LIVING.

He read it over and over, a great realization born within him, growing stronger by the second, spreading with the strength of a metal sheet through his body. The trembling in his fingers stopped.

There was nothing, really, to stop him getting in touch with Vijayan directly.

It would not be easy, or straightforward, or use any of the skills he had developed over a lifetime. In fact, in order to pull this off successfully—he experienced a sudden twisted moment of mirth—he would have to do that which he had avoided for his entire married life: he would have to take a page from Harry Chinappa’s book.