The Hope Factory (8 page)

He glanced at the day’s headlines.
THE LOK AYUKTA ANTI-CORRUPTION RAID YIELDS TWO CRORES IN BRIBES
.

STRAY DOGS ATTACK FOUR-YEAR-OLD CHILD, BUT STILL TOLERATED
. “It is not in our Hindu culture to kill animals,” said a neighboring resident.

VIJAYAN
—
NEW HOPE FOR INDIAN POLITICS?
with a photograph of the politician in question waving from a podium.

In the frivolous party pages, there was a photograph of his friend Vinayak, looking pleased and cool and prosperous at an art auction and, on the same page, Anand’s father-in-law, clutching a glass of gin and tonic with vulpine satisfaction. Harry Chinappa’s hooded eyes were ringed by dark dissipation; with his artificially blackened hair and his prominent hooked nose, he resembled a dissolute bird of prey.

Anand thrust the newspaper away when the interviewee entered the room. The young applicant was slender, bespectacled, and dressed in striped shirt and tie. His hair was parted on the side and neatly combed over, possibly with Brylcreem, for he introduced no odor of coconut oil into the room. According to the notes scribbled by Ananthamurthy, he belonged to a Gujarati bania caste and, therefore, was probably vegetarian, home-loving, and good with numbers. He perched nervously in front of Anand’s desk.

“Your good name?” The applicant, Anand noted, was about
twenty-six years old, with the requisite four years of experience, and fluent in Kannada, as well as Hindi and Gujarati and English. “Born where? Oh, came to Bangalore as a child, is it? Father is doing what?”

For Ananthamurthy, caste and community were important hiring considerations, but Anand tried to guard against this. He himself had married out of caste—and that, in his mind, was a sign of progress, of stepping away from the rigid brahminical mind-set of his parents. Of course, there was still a tendency to hire the familiar, that was a natural impulse; if he analyzed his employee lists, he saw that most were Kannadiga or at least South Indian, some were brahmin—but, as leavening, there were three Muslims, two Kerala Christians, and several North Indians. In fact, if one considered the new machinery consultants, there were even two foreign—Korean—faces wandering around. As a welcoming gesture, special food was brought for them from the Korean restaurant in the city, and when Mr. Ananthamurthy, in a further gesture of first-day hospitality, decided to eat with them, he found the visitors unwrapping sea leaves, fish, and chicken, the unpalatable smells spreading across the table and staying the consumption of his own strictly vegetarian tiffin.

Mr. Ananthamurthy was conservative in his habits, consuming a large home-cooked meal in the morning and carrying to work a small steel tiffin box packed by his wife and daughters to shield him from the perils of oversalted canteen food. But, in truth, the factory canteen food was tasty; the same dishes were served to workers and managers alike (which Anand personally insisted upon): a good everyday menu of vegetables, dal, rice-sambar-saaru, chapattis, a mixed rice such as chitranna bhath or lemon rice, curds, and a sweet. Fully
vegetarian, of course, for that was the preferred way. Indian manufactories might work to upgrade their production methods to international standards, but they were still populated by old-fashioned people with old-fashioned values; one could not argue with that. As Ananthamurthy had discovered, in the call centers and software development offices in the city, things were different. There they introduced American-style ways: fast food, casual attitudes, fun games, crazy decorations. This was apparently done to create environments that no employee would dream of leaving, but of course, that did not work either. Employee turnover continued unabated, like water swirling down an unplugged sink.

It took, on average, three months for new hires to lose their bewilderment, six months to find their feet, and one year to become fully reliable. And then, just as one could put them to work in a thorough fashion and turn one’s attention to other things, they came in blithely ready to quit—citing other job offers, or stress, or nonsense like that one giddy idiot who quit the accounts department to write a book. Employers, it seemed, had to make themselves attractive to potential employees in new and unprecedented ways, as though they were products stacked on supermarket shelves and seeking out buyers.

“You are married? Children?” The good employees usually were. Marriage and children forced a seriousness upon them, prevented them from scurrying from job to job, tempted by any passing incremental offer like a woman of easy virtue and no discrimination.

“Yes, sir. And with two children, sir,” said the applicant, adding considerably to his own worth. “But I am fully willing to travel, if necessary, sir.”

Unfortunately, the thoroughness with which the young
man had prepared for the interview had also made him acutely aware of his own market worth. He was asking for 20 percent more than Anand had planned to pay.

In the abstract, Anand fully approved of such a thing. This was what happened when a society slowly moved out of poverty. Better pay, better lifestyles. It still had the power to astonish him, that he should bear witness to this transformation, striking him afresh every time he wandered into a hypermarket, the rows of products from around the world that were on sale; it moved him, even as his children obliviously shopped for the things they took so much for granted—so different from the small two-type-biscuit, three-type-sweet, one-type-pen kaka shops he had grown up with.

But practically, it made him cautious and thoughtful when he hired. This systems engineer, though, appeared to be worth it. Anand signed a note to the HR man approving his hire.

THAT AFTERNOON HE RECEIVED
a call from his mother, telephoning to complain about the plumbing. The commode kept backing up, she said, and the plumber, in the nature of plumbers, was recalcitrant, inefficient, and mystifying in his proposed solutions. What did Anand think she should do? Over the years, she had taken to calling him on such things, everyday matters, bypassing his father, who seemed content to spend his days in a banian vest and dhoti, discussing philosophy and the importance of not giving in to material desires while Anand solved his plumbing problems from a distance of a hundred miles. “Okay, Amma,” he said. “Okay. I’ll attend to it.”

Each month, without his father’s knowledge, he sent money to his mother, depositing it directly into her account; his father never checked account balances.

“How is he,” he said now.

“Same,” his mother said. “Prostate giving trouble, so maybe the doctor will advise surgery…. Are you eating well?” she said. “And sleeping? … Don’t work too hard.”

“Okay, Amma,” he said, knowing that this standard maternal exhortation hid a complete ignorance of what he did for a living.

Anand’s father could never comprehend or approve of his son’s choice of profession, which he felt sacrificed learning for profit. Years before, visiting Anand’s first factory unit, he could not hide his shock and disgust. He had never returned for a repeat visit; his son’s work became a topic he refused to discuss.

Anand had never forgotten, never forgiven his father’s shame. When his new factory was scheduled to open, he nevertheless dutifully called to invite him to the opening ceremony.

“You should come,” he said.

“Is it?” his father replied. “But isn’t that the week of Guruprasad’s daughter’s wedding in Hubli …” Anand did not argue with this stated conflict with a function of a distant cousin his father had always despised. Instead of pressing his parent as was expected, he said:

“Is it? Then you should go for that.”

His father had not attended the factory inauguration; the resultant distance between Mysore and Bangalore had stretched from a hundred miles to four years. Naturally Anand’s mother could not visit her son’s factory without being disloyal to her husband, and if the increased amounts Anand was depositing in her account indicated his growing financial stability, she made no mention of it, functioning between the two men like a secret agent, marked by guile, covert phone calls, and essays of great diplomacy.

“
I’M GOING OUT FOR
half an hour,” Anand said casually. The trick lay in making it sound uninteresting; an outing that would not register on his wife’s sensitive social radar. “With Vinayak …”

“Vinayak Agarwal?” she asked, looking up from her magazine. “Will his wife be there?”

“No … he wants my help …”—he aimed for vague and boring—“on some engineering matter.”

As he hoped, she immediately lost interest.

Unfortunately, Vinayak, like Vidya, had his own set of socializing concerns; he wanted to meet at the new pub that was the latest in latest things. It would be noisy and crowded, not conducive to the kind of discussion Anand had in mind, but he did want Vinayak’s help and could not quibble.

The Latest Latest Bar was located in the ELIPT Mall—its name was supposedly an acronym for the names of the four brothers who built the mall, but a local wag had immediately expanded it to Extremely Luxurious but In Poor Taste, an opinion that Anand found difficult to disagree with. Shiny escalators swooped upward in a space seemingly imported from shrieking Dubai; an amazement of gilt and a fresco-covered ceiling in a mock-up of the Sistine Chapel: Man reaching upward, milky-eyed with greed, the Creator’s hand holding out not the promise of life at the tip of a finger but, Santa Claus–like, a gift wrapped in paper and ribbons, the angels clustered behind him carrying the urgent promise of more: handbags, perfume bottles, designer-labeled shopping bags. Let there be Lights—and an explosion of spending.

Anand was the first to reach the bar, submitting to the lazy security check and fighting his way to a corner of the bar counter.
He ordered his beer and sorrowfully contemplated the bowl of olives that accompanied it. What, ultimately, was the magic of the olive that allowed it to flourish at the expense of other condiments; that took it from being a local fruit in a regional cuisine—probably once plucked and eaten by sweat-streaked, tree-climbing schoolboys in Italy before angry farmers could chase them away, much as he had raided nellikayi gooseberry trees in Mysore, dipping the spoils in salt and chili powder for a stolen after-school treat—and raised it to the status of an internationally hallowed bar food? He ate one: salty, squashy, cold, and green.

“Want to order some snacks, sir?” The bartender was dressed, like the other bar employees, in a white shirt, black pants, and red Converse shoes.
SELVADURAI
, his name badge said. Anand shook his head and noticed with relief the large figure lumbering in.

Vinayak levered his bulk with effort onto the barstool next to Anand. “Shit! These things are damn uncomfortable.” He placed an olive in his mouth and looked around, but all the tables were occupied. “Whiskey please, yes, that Aberlour is fine, and some paneer tikkas and masala nuts … What do you mean, no masala nuts. No tikkas also? Let me see that menu…. Okay, fine, bruschetta and, yeah, grilled mushrooms. Okay with you, Anand?” Anand nodded; he didn’t actually care. Vinayak was a strict vegetarian, having apparently attained his size on ghee and dal-bhatti alone. Food and drink ordered, Vinayak relaxed and inspected the other people in the bar. He waved at someone at a distant table. “See that guy? He got that large government order apparently by providing whores to the minister involved. What a pimp job, yaar …” Like his namesake, Ganesha, Vinayak was gifted with a potbelly, a penchant for prosperity, the cunning to market a stroll around his parents
into a world odyssey, and a long, trunk-like nose perfect for poking into everyone else’s affairs. “Are we seeing you at Chetty’s party this weekend?”

“Yeah,” said Anand. “I suppose so.”

“Lucky bastard, Chetty, he sleeps around and his wife celebrates by throwing parties.”

“Ey, regarding that land broker you were mentioning,” said Anand, refusing to be sidetracked by Vinayak’s bits of heated gossip.

“Right,” said Vinayak, agreeably. “So you are planning some expansion, is it?”

Anand explained briefly, glossing quickly over his expansion ideas and just speaking of the land he required.

“So, about ten, fifteen acres, right? … And in that area? … Who did you deal with last time? Your father-in-law?”

“No, no,” said Anand, explaining.

“Great man, your father-in-law.” Vinayak spoke in tones that were entirely reverential. “Met him over the weekend, at that art thing … He knows everybody, no? Politicians, industrialists, everyone … even in Bombay-Delhi.”

“Yes, he certainly knows everyone.” Anand saw that Vinayak was looking at him quizzically. “And of course, my first thought was to talk to him, but the thing is, he deals with these high-profile types. And someone was saying that it’s better to keep these land transactions low-key until everything comes through … What do you think?”

“Oh, absolutely.” Vinayak was gratified to have his opinion solicited. “Yeah, best to keep it low-key … And I know the perfect guy for you. I’ll ask him to call you,” he said. “He is very good. Very low-key.”

“Great,” said Anand. “And listen, nothing too expensive,
okay? We’re a small company; making those damn monthly debt obligations is still a struggle …”

“Arrey, don’t worry,” said Vinayak. “He’ll get the job done for you.”

Anand nodded and then stifled a groan when he saw who approached their table. He should have anticipated this, for where Vinayak roamed, could the rat he rode on be far behind?

“Vinayak,” he said urgently. “Don’t discuss any of this with anyone. Not my expansion, and not the land thing. Anyone.”

Vinayak’s eyes gleamed with the wet pleasure of secrecy. “Of course not, yaar,” he said. “I don’t believe in gossip. Hey, Sameer!”

“Bastard,” said the new arrival, placing a sweaty hand on Vinayak, “what’s all this ghaas-poos veg shit, yaar? Where’s my chicken? Hi, Anand.”

Sameer Reddy was the dumb son of a smart father, whose growing mining empire and political contacts were sufficient cause for Vinayak—who never did things without an implicit calculation—to claim a friendship with him and act as his social sponsor. “Cute chicks here tonight,” Sameer said. “Damn hot babes.”