The Hope Factory Page 9

  Shanta looked up and frowned. “You’re late,” she said, her manner not a whit less brusque that usual. “Vidya-ma was asking for you.”

  Kamala said nothing, collecting her buckets and brooms and stalking upstairs.

  nine

  “ISN’T THIS NICE? SO FRESH.… Come on, yaar. Stop yawning and stretch …”

  At six-thirty, Cubbon Park was suffused with the fresh pink of early morning, the red buildings and green trees glowing; the smattering of early morning exercisers looking determined. Like Anand, Valmika was in sweatpants and T-shirt. Father and daughter set off together on a slow trot into the depths of the park, past the walkers and clumps of yoga-contortionists on the grass, occasionally being overtaken by more serious runners.

  It was years since Anand had been running; his wife didn’t question his sudden commitment to fitness; Valmika (with a stern eye on her slim waistline) agreed to join him, and Pingu’s pre-bedtime enthusiasm did not survive the night. “Lazy bum,” Valmika now huffed with the austere censoriousness of an older sibling. “We should have forced him to come, Appa. He’s getting unfit.”

  “Next time,” said Anand. His muscles, long unused, were already aching; he was surprised at the strain; his naturally slender physique concealed the sly weakening of the years, the slithering depredations of approaching middle age. He saw the ease with which his daughter kept up with him and suddenly determined to do this more often, to build up his stamina, to run ten miles with ease, to compete in marathons, to discover, in short, the elixir of immortal youth and enchantment, right here, in Cubbon Park. Moisture coated his face, dripped down his neck into his T-shirt, a relic of a recent family holiday, soaking the image of palm trees and waves forming the word PHUKET.

  “So how come Cubbon Park?” his daughter asked, when they slowed to a walk. “We could have gone running around Sankey Tank; that’s closer to home.”

  “This is green and nice, no?” said Anand.

  Valmika glanced slyly at him. “You know who we might meet here? Someone who lives rather close by…. Guess who.”

  Anand focused on his breathing and wiped his forehead with the edge of his T-shirt.

  “Thatha! He comes here … on his ‘morning constitutional.’ ” Valmika did a surprisingly good imitation of Harry Chinappa’s intonation, and Anand tried not to laugh. “Hey now, don’t,” he said. “Be respectful…. He’s gone to Coorg, actually,” he said, in spite of himself.

  “He’s going to take us there soon,” said Valmika. “He promised. He is planning to breed one of his dogs—and he’s convinced Mama to let us have a puppy. Pingu and I get first choice. Won’t that be great?”

  “Yeah, great. What kind of dog?”

  “Yellow Labrador. Fanta…. Do you remember her? She must have been a puppy herself the last time you came …”

  Anand didn’t remember. Though the children loved traveling there with their maternal grandparents, his own visits to his in-laws’ property in Coorg were few and far between.

  “A dog should be good fun,” he said, “we can—” Valmika interrupted him with “Oh, look! There’s Kavika-aunty.”

  She waved and ran over. Kavika was walking across the grass toward them, holding on to the leash of an aging cocker spaniel. Like them, she was in T-shirt and sweatpants. She was not alone with her dog; she was accompanied by her little four-year-old daughter. Anand watched her laughing and talking with Valmika, who was kneeling and fussing over the dog. The child hung back a little, perhaps rendered shy by this beaming teenage energy.

  He walked over slowly. His heart rate had still not recovered from his running; he could do little more than nod and smile when she looked in his direction. The child peeped at him from behind her mother’s leg, and he found himself instantly relaxing. The responsive twinkle in his eye drew her out; soon she was exchanging confidences, showing him the bruise she had acquired the day before in her grandmother’s garden. Her skin was two shades lighter than her mother’s, just like her hair and eyes; these were the only hints of her putative foreign paternity; in the rest of her, her direct glance, the spark of her intelligence, her laughter, it seemed he could detect the graces of her mother.

  “Come, Valmika,” he said eventually. “We should complete our run.” His daughter pulled away reluctantly; he turned away more slowly still, watching them walk away at the dawdling pace of young child and aging dog.

  He and Valmika completed their circle around the park, jogging back to their car past the red High Court buildings, the stretched residence of a short British past and vainglorious Vidhana Soudha, full of aggrandized aspirations.

  “We should do this every week, Appa,” his daughter said, her face aglow with heat and endorphins. “Isn’t Kavika-aunty cool?” she said. He smiled but did not answer.

  HIS CALF MUSCLES WERE already tightening and painful by the time he reached his office, but he forgot them when he looked at his emails. There, number five from the top on a long list of incoming messages, was the mail they had been waiting for. He read and read again: Cauvery Auto had made the short list; the Japanese parent car company would very much like to take things further in a series of future meetings.

  He immediately forwarded the email to Ananthamurthy and Mrs. Padmavati; they arrived in his office minutes later, their happiness written across their faces.

  “It is because of our prayers,” Ananthamurthy said, “and also the level of preparation we put into the meeting.”

  “Can it be that they are looking nowhere else?” Mrs. Padmavati asked. “That they have already decided upon us?”

  “No, no,” said Anand, decidedly. “There is a short list. We cannot count our blessings, yet.”

  “They are like chickens, is it not?” said Ananthamurthy, and after a short, baffled pause, Anand agreed with him. Blessings were indeed like chickens.

  “Did you read the second half of the email?” he asked them, for this is what had caught his attention. They were asked to provide clarifications of a detailed nature: in case they were selected, would Cauvery Auto be ready with the resources necessary to handle the expansion?

  “Yes, sir,” said Mrs. Padmavati. “We need to make a list…. From a financial point of view, we need to speak to the bankers to extend the loan facility.”

  “We need more land, sir. From a production standpoint,” said Ananthamurthy. “We cannot proceed otherwise. Even if bank funding comes through.”

  “Right,” said Anand.

  IN THE EARLY YEARS of his working life, meetings with bankers were frequently combustible affairs, where need and dignity were in opposition; Anand had to convince skeptical bankers of both his desperation and his worthiness at one go, a humiliating process with variable outcomes. But he had been meticulous about his loan repayments, and he hoped that such scruples had earned him a measure of goodwill.

  He decided to take Mrs. Padmavati with him to the meetings, to reinforce his organizational capability in front of the bankers; it would also be a good proving ground for her. Both of them spent the rest of the day preparing for the meeting, calculating their future requirements: for purchase of the land, for equipment, for new buildings, for new employees. Mrs. Padmavati was conscientious and conservative in her estimates, which pleased Anand, for despite their steady growth, Cauvery Auto was not flush; every expense still needed to be carefully planned for. Hopefully this Japanese deal would give them a much-needed financial fillip; filling the company coffers and allowing employees to take home nice fat bonuses.

  At the bankers’ offices the following afternoon, Anand once again wore his jacket but with no tie. Mrs. Padmavati sat next to him, besilked and earnest. He spoke of their work with conviction, needing no reference to the papers in front of him to recall figures and details. Occasionally Mrs. Padmavati provided concise answers to certain questions. Their nervousness seemed unfounded. They were received with a smile; the bankers were receptive and, gratifyingly, seemed to see Anand as a man of promise and reliability; they finally said,
with an ease that left Anand feeling light-headed, that they would back Cauvery Auto to the extent required, no problem at all; they were very pleased with the company’s performance—words he wished to record just for the pleasure of replaying them later to himself and to everyone at work.

  But the bankers were regrettably firm on one point: any loan they provided would have to be backed by Anand’s personal guarantee. If his company defaulted, the bank would seize his personal assets. Anand agreed, his mind going to his house, already mortgaged, and the other asset he owned: a small flat in Mysore that his parents lived in. If Cauvery Auto ever defaulted on its loan repayments, he stood to lose everything. He could see that the seriousness of such a guarantee was not lost on Mrs. Padmavati.

  “We will succeed, sir,” she told him as they stepped outside the bank doors, with a queer gravitas that touched him deeply. “We will not fail.”

  ORCHESTRATING THE OTHER REQUIREMENT was less straightforward.

  Land.

  He called the Landbroker, who picked up the phone after five interminable rings.

  “Yenu ri,” Anand said, forcing himself to sound casual. “What, any progress?”

  “What, saar?” said the Landbroker, sounding vague and distracted. “Aanh, yes. Yes, saar?”

  “Are you ready to show me something?”

  “Ila, saar, not yet. You be patient …”

  Anand thought about the long red fingernail of the Landbroker and frowned. His promises seemed like passing shadows in a dream, things of no substance whatsoever. As was his wont at moments of strain, Anand cursed multilingually: fuck, thikka munchko, behenchuth. “Not to worry, saar,” said the Landbroker, with illegitimate confidence, the fucker. “One day, two days, not more.”

  Anand telephoned Vinayak. “Listen,” Anand said, “that Landbroker …”

  “Arrey, give him time,” said Vinayak. “Putting together these land deals is really complicated; it needs a good guy—and takes time. If you hurry, you’ll end up with some fucked-up piece of land that six other people also think they own and you’ll get tied up in the courts for years. You give him time …”

  Time, like money, was something Anand could not afford to be generous about. Over the past few weeks, he had busily investigated other land-buying options: the businesswoman, for instance, who used her contacts in political circles to put together vast swaths of land for software companies was reputedly reasonable and efficient in her approach, but, alas, seemed to work exclusively in the Whitefield area, at the opposite end of a vast city; or, another option, the government-developed properties, also too far from his current factory and not always reliable in their deliverability. What he would have appreciated was an industrial land website: simple, logical, and transparent. Instead what he faced was very different: however much he might not like to, he was going to have to speak to Harry Chinappa.

  In doing so, he was going to have to violate his own precept of never combining work with his personal life, and do so, moreover, with someone with whom mutual dislike was tempered only by familial association.

  He quietened his distaste: surely Cauvery Auto was worth it?

  HE HAD MISSED A CALL from him the previous night and received two messages via his wife.

  “Ah,” said Harry Chinappa, when Anand returned the phone call. “Anand. How nice to finally hear from you. I thought, from the lack of response, that you had perhaps lost interest.”

  “No, no, of course not,” said Anand. He forced his voice to sound cheerful. “How are you?”

  Harry Chinappa did not waste time in pleasantries. “So, did you get my message? I told Vidya. I have arranged the meeting for tomorrow afternoon. Come over this evening to my house. I will brief you. Don’t be late,” he said, and disconnected.

  Vidya, predictably, was aware of all the details about his planned meeting with her father. To this day, he knew, she talked with her parents several times a day, discussing family matters with her mother and matters of social importance with her father—unquestionably a better child to her parents than he was to his.

  Now she said, “Daddy wants you to wear a white shirt for tomorrow’s meeting. With a jacket and no tie. And a nice shirt for tonight as well.”

  “Why tonight?” Anand asked, puzzled. She was pouring tea: served as she liked it, English-style, with hot tea in a tea-cozy-covered pot, milk, and a bowl of sugar lumps. “Pingu! Sweetie, no,” she said, stopping her son from grabbing a second sugar lump. “All your teeth will fall out…. Because,” she said to Anand, handing him a cup, “they are having a few guests over. But Daddy says to come over anyway; he wants to finish the discussion with you. Ey, it’s so nice of him, no? To help you like this. He’s so busy …”

  Yes, said Anand. It is very nice of him.

  THE CHINAPPA HOUSE WAS at the end of a warren of lanes off Richmond Road. It had been built in the seventies, along with a few other houses in a plot subdivided from the remains of a large colonial bungalow and—as though to apologize for the lack of taste and heritage inherent in such a proceeding—the cement-roofed, mosaic-floored house was relentlessly stuffed with memorabilia of times past.

  Years before, Anand, beguiled and lulled by his college sweetheart’s modesty in describing her home as small and cramped, “nothing compared to the old bungalow,” had accompanied her to her home and stared in amazement at the chintz-covered sofas, the heavy rosewood furniture, the windows swathed in heavy curtains, the lavish precision of the manicured lawn. Anand, awed, had thought it looked like something out of a magazine. He had wondered, abashed, what she would say when she saw his own childhood home in Mysore.

  He had grown up in Lakshmipuram, not in one of the lovely old bungalows of that neighborhood but in the alleyways behind, in a tiny two-room house that was in its entirety smaller than his current living room. His parents had subsisted on the modest salary that his father made as a senior government clerk, refusing to augment it either by bribery or by better wages in the private sector. They seemed to think that the security provided by a nondismissible government job and a clear conscience were entirely sufficient to live upon—a state of contentment that provided Anand with little consolation, especially when watching classmates scatter after school to their own large homes.

  Vidya’s Mysore connections were of a very different nature. Harry Chinappa’s family had been dignitaries in the old Mysore maharaja’s court; the walls of their home were littered with fading sepia photographs of dead Chinappas with visiting members of the Nehru family, old hunting guns, and eviscerated, plaque-mounted skulls of animals killed in erstwhile times when such pleasures were legal.

  The house had not changed much since his first visit. He could hear a piano being played; he did not recognize the song. He had his cellphone pressed against his ear, trying to complete a conversation with a rascally supplier, and walked straight into a chorus of singing voices that drowned the conversation on the phone. “What? Hello?” he shouted and drew the suddenly silent attention of many astonished eyes.

  Ruby Chinappa levered herself out of an overstuffed armchair and came surging toward him, breaking like a sturdy, determined wave about his ankles. He was short; she was shorter still and terrifyingly wide. “Anand!” she said. “Put away that silly phone; so busy all the time…. Come and enjoy the music! We are having such a nice sing-song.”

  He hesitated and was lost, swept in her wake into the paralyzing throng; he would complete his phone call later. He recognized in some of the guests the fixtures of his in-laws’ social life: fossils from the club and relicts of the city’s old homes; as far as he knew, the patrons of the newer apartment buildings were never welcome in his father-in-law’s house unless he knew their parents and approved of their antecedents—or unless their successes earned for themselves a mention in the newspapers.

  Harry Chinappa was as tall as his wife was short, towering over Anand; the hospitable smile on his face tightened as he beheld his son-in-law. “Ah, Anand, come in, come in…. You’re l
ate,” he said, bringing his voice down.

  Anand felt himself flush. “I had some meetings with the bank,” he said.

  “Anand’s work is going very well,” announced Ruby Chinappa in some haste, and Anand felt the chill of polite attention settle upon him.

  “Oh, yes!” said Colonel Krishnaiah. “Vidya was telling me the other day. Factory full of orders, is it? How nice. Well done.”

  “Vidya seems so proud of your successes,” he heard someone else say.

  “Yes, yes,” said Ruby Chinappa. “We all are.”

  “Ruby! The chip bowls appear empty,” said Harry Chinappa. “I have to keep reminding you. Really,” he announced, “if one wants anything done well in this household, one is almost forced to do it oneself…. Now, if you will all excuse me for a few minutes.” He waited until a flushed Ruby Chinappa hurried in with freshly topped chip bowls before sweeping Anand before him into a little side alcove lined with books, a desk, and uncomfortable wooden chairs that could never be criticized because they were older than all the humans in the house.

  Anand settled himself into a chair, feeling the knots of wood press into his back. If the object of highest veneration in the Chinappa household was the piano, the books in this alcove came a close second. Anand had not closely encountered the first before his marriage and had never displayed any affinity for his father-in-law’s library of books by dead English writers with names like P. G. Wodehouse and H. H. Munro; all this apparently served to put him even further beyond the pale of Harry Chinappa’s approval.