The Hope Factory (16 page)

“Get it, Narayan!” Vyasa said.

“Good catch!” said Anand, pleased in spite of himself. The boy had lifted himself into the air and caught the ball off Valmika’s bat very neatly.

“Hah! Nice game!” When they had played for an hour and a half, and the game had descended into sweat and arguments, Anand flung the bat down and collapsed with the children onto the grass. “Here,” he said, handing a glass to Narayan, “have something to drink.” He himself drank thirstily from the glass of Pepsi that Kamala had brought out on a tray and wiped the moisture from his forehead. The children were already holding out their glasses for more. Narayan quickly drank his Pepsi, refused a refill, gathered the bat, wickets, and ball, and carried them to the back of the house, where his mother would put them away and set him to some cleaning job in the backyard.

Valmika took charge and turned her father and brother in to the house for a half hour, with strict instructions for them to stay put until she called them out. When she did, Anand was charmed to see that, with a mysterious efficiency, his daughter had organized their lunch into an alfresco picnic under the shade of the neighbor’s rain tree. She had spread a coir mat and laid out dishes and plates and cold drinks.

“Arrey,” said Anand, “why are we eating out on the grass when there is such a nice dining room inside?”

“Appa, please,” said Valmika. “How can it be a picnic otherwise?”

He smiled at her. “And does it have to be a picnic?”

“It does,” both children clamored. “You know it does.”

“You’re right,” he said and settled himself on the grass, the children ranged about him, opening another can of a cold, aerated drink, feeling the sugar swell the sense of well-being within him. As they ate, he competed with them in telling silly jokes. Two peanuts were walking down the street and one was a salted. What did the fish say to the greedy prawn? You’re so shellfish. And their favorite: about the man who had an abscess in his bottom and whose breaking wind sounded like a Japanese car manufacturer, for an abscess makes the fart go Honda.

After a while his daughter asked, with a casual air, “So, do you think I could go to that party tonight? All my friends are going …”

“Hasn’t Mama already said no?” Anand shook his head. “Then don’t ask again, kutty, I don’t like it.”

“All my friends are going,” she said again but stopped when she saw his expression. When next she spoke, it was on a different topic. “Appa, what happened at the factory that day? The export thing?”

“Oh,” he said, surprised that she even remembered. “Yes, I think it went well.”

“That’s good,” she said. “You’re going to export now?”

“No,” he laughed. “Not yet. It’s not that simple. There will be more meetings and so on, it may take them months to decide, so we will have to see.”

“Eat some of the chicken,” she said now, her tone motherly. “It’s delicious, try some.” He let her fill his plate. “Come on,” he said, “you eat too, before Pingu eats up the entire picnic.”

There was a time when she would reach eagerly for her food, ignoring the admonishments of her mother to go slow, but she was suddenly at an age where she seemed to weigh every mouthful she ate, computing its worth in terms of calories
and god-knows-what-all other fashionable parameters of nutrition offered by the women’s magazines that his wife flooded the house with. Anand watched her assess the picnic, choose small spoonfuls of chicken and vegetables, and eat slowly, bite by careful bite, and he worried: was it enough?

So much of his daughter was snared in inexplicable female mystery, and even though he seized gladly on the fact that she continued to chatter away to him as much as she ever did, there were still lines between them, newly formed, that neither could cross. When she argued with her mother, for instance. The topics seemed to him very silly and trivial, certainly not worth the tears or angry faces, but he never dared point that out to either of them. Or when, once a month, he saw her prostrated upon her bed, a cushion clutched to her belly to ease the pain that attacked her abdomen. He never knew what to do. Should he step up as he naturally would if she had scraped her knee and sit by the side of the bed offering comfort and concern and busy himself with pills and prescriptions and worried phone calls to the doctor, or would it embarrass her if he did?

His concern stretched to other things too. There were times when he overheard conversations or read articles on how Indian teenagers—especially well-to-do urban ones—were changing, worryingly, into facsimiles of their Western counterparts.

“Are you talking to her?” he asked his wife. “About drugs and sex and alcohol and so on?”

“Of course not,” she said. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I mean,” he explained, “about whether these things are happening in her school. Her friends.”

Vidya looked troubled.

“Anand,” she said. “Valmika is just fourteen. And she’s a
good girl. She is not going to go near things like that. Neither are her friends, I think. We know all their families.”

But wasn’t that what all parents thought, he’d asked—and yesterday Vidya had said, “Oh, yes, I talked to her. Or actually, Kavika talked to her for me, and it is the same thing.”

Anand did not know whether to feel relieved or awkward.

The garden doors opened; his wife had returned home. She said: “What on earth are you guys doing?”

And behind her, another voice, amused: “Ah. Déjeuner sur l’herbe. What fun!”

“Appa gave me permission, Mama. Hi, Kavika-aunty,” said Valmika. “That’s French, isn’t it?”

“It is,” said Kavika. “The name of a painting, actually. Hi, Anand.” He looked up from where he had been staring blindly—at his wife hugging Pingu; he smiled; he tried to think of something to say.

“Hi,” he managed. If he could remember the French phrase she’d used, he would look up the painting on the Internet; impossible; he would not be able to identify it. What else did he know about paintings? Or indeed of any art? Babble-onion art-wuk. That’s what.

Vidya said: “Oh, Kavika, can you drop something off at my mother’s? It’s just a shawl; she left it in my car when we went for her medical checkup yesterday. Yeah, she’s fine, blood pressure’s a little high, that’s it. No, don’t get up, I’ll bring it.”

Kavika sat down on the mat, the sun catching the speckled gray in her hair and turning it silver. He wondered how to inaugurate any of the topics of conversation he had with her when she was not around. He need not have worried; it happened most naturally.

She said, just as he had imagined she would: “Amrita tells me that they’ve roped you in as well …”

“For next Tuesday?” He grinned. “Yeah. I don’t think I was given a choice of refusing.”

Unhappy with the rampant corruption of the major political parties, Amir and Amrita and some like-minded people were organizing an event to raise awareness on the issue.

“It’s a great idea,” said Kavika. “I just hope it’s effective. Amir feels that we are capable of reform, but I have my doubts. What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” said Anand. “The fact is, even if individual politicians are clean, elections cost money…. A lot of money …”

“So, that’s why there’s no chance of someone outside of the major parties ever winning an election?”

Anand shrugged. “Not impossible—but tough. They’d be competing against huge party machinery. It’s a simple question of economics, no? It costs a lot of money to win a state election, and multiples of that to win a parliamentary seat. Which regular, middle-class professional can fight that? Even with all the goodwill and qualifications in the world?”

His son’s head was resting on his lap; Vyasa had dozed off, lulled by the sun, the cricket, and the food. Valmika, he noticed, was listening intently to their conversation.

Kavika rested her head on her folded knees. “Amrita was telling me that they’re trying to see if they can get Vijayan to be the chief guest…. I have mixed feelings about that …” she said.

“It will certainly raise the profile of the event,” said Anand. “Lots of publicity.”

If Vijayan had initials or a last name, it was proof of his already iconic status that people simply referred to him by his first name alone, like the emperor Akbar-the-great or the singer Madonna. In newspaper photographs and television interviews
and on posters, he appeared completely unlike the standard-issue politician: a clean-looking, pleasant-faced young man; someone one might actually be glad to invite home without first locking up the young girls and the silver. He did not wear rings or oversize, sinister dark glasses; he did not sport a neta cap to show his cultural loyalties to Mahatma Gandhi. People vied to get close to him; his wife was pleasant; they were incorruptible; he was inviolate.

Vijayan was foreign-educated and private-sector-trained but despite these attributes of elitism had nevertheless proved himself to be a genial man of the people. This was one of his better abilities: to relate just as easily to the highest and lowest of the land. Mahatma Gandhi, they said, had this quality. He was a gifted orator, they said, his mellifluous speeches invariably striking the right chord, whether he was addressing an illiterate gathering of farmers or the modern maharajas of international finance. He never spoke about the wonders of his own party or even about himself. He claimed no credit—that was the astonishing thing about him: in a democracy, where even the shiest public servant was forced to advertise his achievements to a careless voting public, Vijayan never spoke of himself. Instead, he had the knack of speaking of the problems facing them, as a people, as a country, as a village, a family, a community, a company. And he spoke of these matters with such thought and concern, with such an air of balance and morality, that one felt compelled to agree with him, and then, by degrees, that this young man was the very one to solve these problems. That was his political genius. He made even the most qualified and experienced of politicians look like greedy, self-serving grabbers. Best of all, for all his foreign-training and high education, he was born of a previously untouchable caste, a dalit family. The media framed excited headlines around
him in ever-inventive and foolish ways:
DALIT DAYLIGHT
was one.
DALIT DELIGHT
, said another in thrilled one-upmanship.
VIJAYAN BY NAME AND VICTORY BY NATURE
, said a third.

Once before, Anand had seen him in the flesh, at a function at a five-star hotel. Vijayan had been one of the speakers and afterward, under the gleaming lights, had casually stood in the center of a shy, adoring crowd. This was not the street; the audience’s extreme interest in Vijayan was tempered by their upbringing: they did not know how to mob him. Harry Chinappa had suffered no such shyness. He managed to get himself introduced to Vijayan and made Ruby take a picture of them together, asking the other people standing around to move out of the way. He then sent the photo to the newspaper offices, so that they might publish it on their party pages, and the next day, he wrote a follow-up letter to Vijayan himself, enclosing with it a copy of the photograph. So nice to meet you, he wrote. So rare to have politicians of such caliber in this great nation of ours. He sent it off, forwarding a copy to his son-in-law for his edification.

Anand asked Kavika: “Why do you have mixed feelings about Vijayan?”

She plucked restlessly at the tufts of grass next to the coir mat. “I don’t know,” she said. “He seems like a good guy. Clean. Qualified. But, on the other hand, he represents a traditional, established party—with all its corruption and fierce internal politics—so how clean can he truly be …?” Was that sudden mischief in her glance? “Your father-in-law,” she said, “certainly thinks he is a wonderful candidate …” He could not help himself; his eyes revealed his opinion of his father-in-law, gratifyingly reflected in the merry comprehension of hers. He glanced at his daughter and forced himself to compose his face.

He could hear Vidya bustling up. “Here it is! Thanks so much!”

Kavika got up to leave; she said, smiling directly at him: “So I will see—both of you?—next Tuesday evening.”

“How come?” asked Vidya.

“I told you,” said Anand. “Amir’s event.”

“Oh,” said Vidya. “Right. Amrita asked me too. So interesting, no? It really is about time that we make some effort to change the system.” Later she looked at him in some surprise. “I wonder why Amir called you? You don’t do anything that is not work-related. He really must have twisted your arm.”

THAT NIGHT, ANAND ENSCONCED
himself in his study. His wife was out, the children were spending the night at their maternal grandparents’, for all practical purposes he was alone. He plugged his phone into the iPod dock, flipping through until he found the album he wanted. Pink Floyd,
The Dark Side of the Moon
. He adjusted the volume and reached into the steel Godrej bureau, his fingers searching past the files for the bag of hash he kept hidden in the back.

He locked the study door and drew the curtains before rolling his joint, emptying a cigarette tube of its contents, crumbling the black hash into the tobacco leaves, quickly hoovering it all back into the cigarette tube placed between his lips with an old expertise that, like so many things, was gained in college. He opened the curtains and the window screen as well. He switched off the lights and smoked the joint slowly, standing by the window and carefully blowing the smoke out into the night air. His son would not notice, he was too young, but Anand did not want either his wife or his daughter walking into the room hours later and asking awkward questions.

In the darkened room behind him, the music sang of money, time, and lunatics upon the grass.

Over the years, this Pink Floyd album had receded to the back of his mental musical shelf, but he had heard a couple of songs from it the previous weekend and now it leapt back quickly, engrossing him, the cadences so familiar, his body poised in ancient recognition, anticipating the next musical phrase in perfect, unfaltering sequence. It brought back memories: of the previous weekend, of college, and of the more recent, few-years-ago excitement of attending a Roger Waters concert in Bangalore.