Free The Hope Factory by Lavanya Sankaran Page A

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 youngman 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