The Hope Factory

by Lavanya Sankaran

  They were at a Lebanese restaurant, Anand and Vidya, Amir, and Kavika. Amrita had stayed away, pleading work, and Anand had planned to do so as well—until he learned who else would be there.

  “You know, it used to be this really simple affair …” she said and proceeded to describe customs that Anand recognized, in an instant moment of joyous enchantment, as identical to Deepavalis from his own childhood: a small family affair that started well before sunrise, with children setting off fireworks on the street in the chill early morning air until they were chased down by their mothers for the ritual predawn oil bath and donning of new clothes. Readings from the Ramayana followed by a breakfast of hot idlis and a spicy spoonful of ground herbs in a leghyam that his sister hated, finding it too strong and peppery, but that he rather enjoyed, before a day of visiting relatives and eating homemade sweetmeats and an evening of more fireworks.

  He had never expected this, this gift of a shared communal past: to discover the shadings of simple brahmin austerity behind Kavika’s current international sophistication.

  Her words triggered within him a fund of memories of his childhood life in Mysore. He wanted to tell her these things as he had never told anyone else. She would listen in her sympathetic, intelligent way—and she would understand. She would not judge him. And she would help him make sense of these things, of the passage of his life, help him bridge the frozen, awkward moments of the past with the speed of the present.

  Usually, when she was around, he found himself tongue-tied, sneaking occasional darting glances at her, fiercely concealing the dreadful exhilaration and the plunging depression that chased each other within him like mischievous children on a playground.

  Vidya said: “Oh, how lovely that sounds …”—as though she had not spent several years enjoying a tide of newly flashy-splashy celebrations, parties, late nights, card games, gifts, decorations, and delirious spending; the festal name itself shortened to Diwali in some weird Bollywoodized fashion—and Anand forced himself to speak up—“We used to have really simple Deepavalis when I was a child”—and felt Kavika’s eyes focus on him.

  “In Mysore?” she asked. “Ah! Beautiful city.” She frowned in thought. “What are you, a Hebbar Iyengar?”

  No, he said, “Smartha Brahmin.”

  “Oh,” she said, “like us Iyers!”

  “Well, similar, though with some differences.” Tongue-in-cheek and reveling in his own daring, he said, “My uncle used to say: ‘For a restful, headache-free life, never marry an Iyer woman—too aggressive!’ ”

  Her shout of laughter was drowned by Vidya’s shocked “Anand! … How rude!” Vidya firmly returned to the original topic. “We should really go back to that, shouldn’t we? I mean, the simpler things of life. In the craziness of our lives we sometimes forget the joy of those simple traditions.”

  Now, how was Vidya to reconcile this with the lavish party that Harry Chinappa liked to throw at his daughter’s house at his son-in-law’s unhappy expense?

  In the study, she plucked nervously at her toes like an outgeneraled Mughal ruler who, flanked by the Portuguese, accepted the help of the British and rather lived to regret that decision, saying of her father: “Ey, you know how he likes to help us with these things. And I know he has already gone ahead with many of the arrangements.”

  Anand refused to slip into the old, established mechanics of their marriage and rush to her rescue. Provoked by a burgeoning new obstinacy, he said: “You like his help, no? You are always saying.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, refusing to be disloyal. “Of course I do.”

  “You should tell him, yaar,” he said. “Tell him you want to keep it simple this year.”

  “Yes. That’s a good idea,” she said, getting up. “I will.” He watched her leave, trailing indecision and strategy behind her.

  He promptly forgot about the matter, his own mind utterly distracted by the prospect of the following day.

  Kavika was to visit the factory, to collect another contribution to the children’s education fund that she was working on with Amir and Amrita. “If you don’t mind,” she’d said over the telephone. “I have to swing by that side anyway to fund-raise at a garment factory. The owner promised me a check a long time ago and I’m going to squeeze it out of him.”

  “Please come,” Anand had said, formally, hiding his extreme delight.

  She was to arrive at 11:00 A.M., and he had planned to clear his desk before that and possibly run a comb through his hair. Instead, immersed in work, he was on the telephone, wrestling in prayer and remonstrance with his steel supplier, when he saw her at his door.

  “Anand! Thank you so much for this,” she said when he had finished his phone call. Her eyes swiveled to the picture window. “Oh, wow.” She stood riveted by the sight of the factory floor. “You know what? I’ve been in a thousand offices—but I’ve never actually visited an industrial factory before…. This is amazing.”

  He joined her at the window, heat rushing to his face at her evident, unexpected interest.

  “Would you like a tour?” he asked, surprise making him cautious, delight making him shy.

  “Really? Now?” she said. “Wow. Are you sure? You don’t mind? That would be very cool.”

  “No problem, yaar,” said Anand, with a sense of masterly understatement.

  HE LED HER DOWNSTAIRS. She walked by his side along the yellow lines that marked pathways separating the rows and columns of machinery. He had made her wear a hard hat, like he did, and he paused at every turning to make sure there was no wayward forklift operator or worker with a trolley of raw materials heading toward her. He would not risk her safety.

  “We don’t make a very complicated product,” he said, self-deprecatingly. She stood very close to him; she had to in order to hear his words over the noise of the machinery. A gap of mere inches. He took her through the process, his explanation growing with enthusiasm when he saw that she was really interested; she was not just being polite, her breath feathering his cheek when she leaned in to ask questions, her hand occasionally touching his arm to make a point.

  They wandered together through the sunlit factory to where sheets of steel were pressed by the dyes within the stamping machines into a variety of shapes, then to where they were further welded together into new shapes by the workers at the welding machines, and finally to the loading bay, where they were stacked in bright orange crates, ready to be forklifted onto pallets that would make their way in container trucks to the various automotive companies Cauvery Auto supplied.

  “It’s like pieces of a three-D puzzle, isn’t it?” she said, inspecting a box of stampings that waited in the loading bay. “All of them eventually assembled into the body of a car, or a truck, or something …”

  “I suppose so…. It’s not a very complicated product,” he said, “but we focus very hard on finish and quality. That’s what we have to achieve. A world-class finish, consistently, quickly.”

  “That’s what the Germans and the Japanese have mastered, isn’t it? Is it difficult,” she asked, “to get Indian workers to do high-quality work?”

  “It all depends on the training,” he said. He realized, with some surprise, that he had never discussed these matters with anyone other than Ananthamurthy and a few others in the factory. He had never dreamed she would be engaged by such matters, so curious, warm appreciation in her eyes. “We have to de-skill and multi-skill them…. We retrain them from scratch. Even if they come to us with experience. Then we train them to work across a range of equipment.” He took her to the charts that showed how they managed quality throughout the factory and their efforts to introduce elements of Japanese production systems through the factory. “The most difficult thing is to get our workers to follow preset processes in a disciplined way. They want to get creative, find shortcuts. Also, they don’t want to cause offense to their colleagues, so if one of their friends makes a mistake, they don’t like to bring it up…. But if we are to compete globally in manufact
uring, we have to address these issues…. Plus, of course, quality inspection at every stage of the process …”

  At the end of the tour, she glanced up at the tall yellow cranes that ran along the factory ceiling. “So, tell me, Anand,” she said, mischievously, “do you ever go joyriding on those cranes after-hours?”

  “Kavika!” he said, laughing. “Do not even think of suggesting such a thing to Pingu…. He’ll give me no peace….”

  Somewhere during the tour, he had forgotten to be awkward with her.

  BACK IN HIS OFFICE, he had just pulled out his checkbook when the phone rang. Absorbed in their conversation, he did not look at the identity of the caller before answering; this was his mistake.

  “I find your attitude utterly unreasonable. Hello, hello, can you hear me?” Harry Chinappa’s voice was sharp and loud.

  “Sorry?” said Anand. “What?” He could feel his face flush; he could tell from Kavika’s face that she had identified the voice on the telephone.

  “It is utterly ridiculous on your part. How can we even think of altering all these arrangements on the eve of the party? All the invites have already been sent out; everything has been finalized for weeks. I must say, I find this utterly irresponsible on your part. Utterly.”

  “Sorry?” said Anand again, his voice cautious. Perhaps Harry Chinappa had raised one too many whiskeys to his mouth and blown a crucial blood vessel. “Please, what is this?”

  “If you wanted a simpler, smaller affair, why on earth couldn’t you have mentioned it earlier? Any effort I put into these little matters is only to help you, m’boy. To help you and Vidya. Far be it for me to impose my point of view on others. I am simply not made that way. But to bring it up now, when it is too late … ridiculous! All the invitations have gone out; we cannot possibly call people up and disinvite them just so you can have reduced numbers. Never heard of such a thing! And when I have put so much effort into planning the guest list—we cannot think of serving our guests substandard fare. Simple, vegetarian food, indeed! What, I ask you, is wrong with prawns?”

  “Nothing is wrong with prawns,” said Anand, flushing in embarrassment. He wanted his father-in-law off the phone quickly. “Sorry? No, Vidya hasn’t discussed anything with me about the party…. No, no problem…. Well, if you think it is important, go ahead. No, I have no problem with it.”

  “That’s excellent, m’boy.” Harry Chinappa sounded entirely mollified. “Vidya must have misunderstood. Good, I’m so glad…. Such a shock to my system…. And what do you think about lobster patties? The caterers recommend them highly—they do them with a sort of coastal masala and serve them on a small banana leaf strip.”

  “Sure,” Anand said, desperately. “Go ahead. Whatever you like.”

  He disconnected and saw that Kavika was laughing. Hard. He began to laugh too—and in an instant, years of handling Harry Chinappa fell away from his shoulders. “Uncle Harry,” she said, chuckling, “must always do things his way and no other …”

  “He doesn’t approve of my work,” said Anand.

  “Oh, of course not,” said Kavika, lightly. “He doesn’t approve of Amir and Amrita’s work either. And absolutely not of mine…. And as for my personal life, forget it! He lectures my mother whenever he can, poor thing …”

  “How are you settling down?” Anand said. “Let me know if there is anything I can do to help, okay?”

  She reached over and placed her hand on his, warm, gentle, his skin coming to life under hers.

  “Anand,” she said. “That is so sweet. But you guys are already helping so much…. You have no idea …”

  He wrote out the check.

  “This is fantastic,” she said. “Thank you. I’ll drop off the receipt with Vidya. I’m meeting her tomorrow. And, Anand? Thanks for the tour. It was brilliant!”

  VIDYA WAS WAITING FOR him when he got home, her voice as loud and as sharp as Harry Chinappa’s. “Ey, why did you do that? You made me look like a total fool with my father!” she said. “You know, I’m trying to simplify things and you are just not being supportive! I can’t believe this!”

  “You should have told him directly, no?” Anand said. “You wanted to make it simple. Why drag my name into it?”

  “What do you mean, drag your name into it? As though you’re a bloody guest in this house and not the host of the party…. Then? … Why didn’t you support me?”

  He would not be cowed. “Okay,” he said. “Sorry. Shall I call him back and tell him both of us have changed our minds? Both of us want to keep it simple?”

  He saw the shift in her face, emotion slipping behind nervous strategy. “No,” she said. “Now it’s too late. Let it be.”

  IN A MATTER OF A DAY or two, Vidya seemed to accept the inevitability of the party and very quickly get caught up in her usual excitement over such things. She said, over dinner one day, in a welter of pleasure: “Daddy says he is going to bring a special guest to our party. I wonder who it is.” She looked at him in sudden suspicion. “Do you know?”

  “Me?” said Anand. “No. How would I know?”

  “Oh. Mummy thought he might have told you. Even she doesn’t know. But I can’t believe you’re not curious …!”

  As an unforeseen, if slightly amusing consequence of his having given Harry Chinappa carte blanche on the party, this was, perversely, a moment when Anand’s stock with his father-in-law had never been higher. This was made clear to him when he received a phone call from his mother-in-law: “Harry is very satisfied,” she said. “He is very happy with you, Anand. He was saying that the party arrangements are going to be first-class. You know how difficult he is to please. He still shouts at me, after all these years, if things are not just as he likes. Everything must be of the best!”

  That Anand did know, having received the catering bills. He was shocked to note that Harry Chinappa had taken his acquiescence on the prawns to heart—proceeding to order lobster and a dozen other things that had Anand gaping. He wondered whether to call him and ask him to cancel some of the more exorbitant items on the list; imagined the conversation; and decided that, after all, it was just a stupid party catering matter, expensive but simply not worth the trouble. He would put his foot down next year. He wished he could share his father-in-law’s extravagance with Kavika. She would be very amused.

  But that was not a privilege reserved for him. He overheard Vidya on her cellphone at a moment when she thought he was having a bath. “You know, Kavika,” she was saying, “I really wanted to keep it simple—but Anand, he likes these large parties and he is siding with my father on this. I know, I know, I’m absolutely dreading it …”

  Later, she looked at him, hurt. “Why are you so angry with me?” she said. “What have I done to you?”

  fourteen

  BY LATE EVENING, THE FRANTIC, happy 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 he
r 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?”