The Hope Factory Read Free

husband’s niece’s wedding.
    There were times, in the early years, when the battle fatigue hit Anand so hard he would almost stop, dreading the next phone call, harbinger of trouble, of something gone wrong, of chaos unanticipated. But something in him had clung on, blindly, and he had managed to pull himself out of the primordial slime and say, very simply, yes, we can do it. We can produce things of world-class quality, and we can deliver them on time. And in him lay the strength that comes from such alchemical magic, the power discovered within himself to take environmental dross and turn it into pure gold.
    He walked back to his car and reversed slowly out of the area. He would mention this visit to Ananthamurthy, who hadtoiled in this old, greasy shed by his side. Or perhaps not. Neither of them was particularly given to romanticizing their past; Ananthamurthy would probably stare at him in surprise and wonder why Anand was telling him things he already knew.
    ON THE DRIVE HOME , Anand found himself rehearsing parts of the speech that he would be making the following day. “Welcome,” he said, to the steering wheel. “
Wel
come.” He fell prey to his usual insecurities for a fleeting moment and wished that he had certain natural advantages: of height, a better speaking voice, the ability to size up people at a glance and the charisma to instantly win them over. “Wel
come
,” he tried. The highway bestrode a gentle ridge, covered by the rising tide of the endless city, colored cinder-block houses topped with black plastic water tanks racing up the slope in a wave. His car nudged past stained city walls layered with cinema and political advertisements, the film actors posed with an engaging artfulness not quite mastered by the politicians: plug-ugly, with odd hair and shifty smiles like wanted crime posters gone coy and desperate to please. “Welcome,” he said, in passing. Not. Motherfuckers.

two
    THE SHINY LITTLE HATCHBACK CAR appeared in exquisite contrast to its surroundings, the metal glossy, the padded interior cool with air-conditioned comfort. The road it traversed was composed of tar and dirt and fetid garbage and flooded with a wash of pedestrian traffic that spilled into the path of the car in careless, dusty profusion. There was little room to maneuver within the press of human habitation: shops, dwellings, tiffin rooms, all crammed together, higgledy-piggledy, dangerously one-atop-the-other, falling right off, a miracle of wishful architecture and denuded finances.
    From where she stood, next to the onion seller’s cart, Kamala studied the passage of the vehicle with something akin to pride. She did not own the car, it was true. She had never been inside this or any other car. But she had watched the owner grow into his current eminence from a dusty schoolboy (not too different from her own) playing cricket in thegully outside her home and being scolded by his mother, who, like her, cleaned houses for a living.
    The car stopped next to a new building painted a cheerful pink. He was here to visit to his parents after a break of several months; Kamala, along with the rest of the neighborhood, knew all the details. Who could have anticipated it? That he would win a scholarship, that he would study engineering, that he would find employment with a company in Pune, and flourish so well that his parents could give up their jobs cleaning houses and tending gardens and live, like royalty, in bright pink homes and have him visit, driving all the way from Pune in his bright new car.
    She would pay them a visit later, Kamala decided, carrying some fruit with her. That would be perfectly acceptable. To visit, and to congratulate them on their success—and find out how such success was to be achieved.
    She turned her attention back to the onion in her hand, testing the weight of it on her palm. It was still warm, trapping within itself the dregs of the day’s heat and of the various human hands that had