The Hope Factory Read Online Free PDF

answer to this, but couldn’t resist asking.
    “Just another couple,” said Amir. “Colleagues from our old software days…. Nice people. And Kavika. I’ve barely met her since she’s been back—be good to see her again.”
    Anand glanced around. Vidya was busy with another call, another message. “What is Kavika doing here? She was with the UN, wasn’t she?”
    “That’s right! And really successful too,” said Amrita. “But she’s given that up and she’s back with her baby. Well, toddler. She seems to be exploring options, but in the short term, she is going to be working with me on fund-raising for that scholarship program for underprivileged schoolchildren.” She tapped Anand on the knee and smiled. “Thanks for your contribution, by the way. That was really generous.”
    He shrugged it off, embarrassed, and asked instead: “She’s going to be here for some time?”
    “I hope so,” said Amrita. “She’s brilliant. Fun. Quite unconventional, but her heart’s in the right place.”
    “Lord,” said Amir, smiling at old memories, “we used to be such a neighborhood brat pack growing up; all of us: Kavika—such a rowdy, like my brother, Kabir…. Vidya was better behaved, I remember. Kabir and Kavika stole Harry Chinappa’s cigarettes once and hid them under my pillow…. Ammi gave me such a walloping! Jesus. Who knew she had such powerful biceps?”
    Amrita shook her head reprovingly, and Anand burst out laughing. Amir’s mother was famously gentle and mild. Vidya joined the conversation: “Oh, that cigarette story! So funny! All the parents were so angry!” She waved her phone at them. “Kavika should be here in two minutes.”
    HE HAD MET HER once before, one evening at his father-in-law’s house the previous week. She had worn a Fabindia kurta that covered her to her knees, a girl of four cuddled sleepily into her lap. Smiling and chatting on the chintz sofa, sandwiched between Ruby Chinappa and another guest like a thin slice of meat in the soft, enfolding cheeks of a bun. Anand had said very little.
    “You won’t believe!” Vidya had eagerly burst out when she first heard the news, for after years of absence, a glamorous international professional existence, and a complete loss of contact with her old childhood friends, Kavika had returned home with a child—but no husband—and, more interesting, no record of a husband ever having been. “My god, can you imagine!” Vidya had said to Anand. “Can you just imagine! God, yaar! I can’t believe her mother didn’t tell us!” But Harry Chinappa, perhaps in deference to Kavika’s mother, had soondeemed her acceptable and Vidya had immediately followed suit. None of it was particularly his business and Anand had paid it no attention—until he met her that first time and some comment she made in passing, something trivial, something humorous, had caught his surprised interest.
    Tonight she was dressed far more casually, her tall, slender, narrow-chested frame in a white tank-top ganji and loose block-printed cotton pants that were not too different in pattern from the cushions on the verandah. Her gray-flecked hair was cut so short it framed her skull in an almost military style, adding distinction to a face that was much younger than its thirty-five years. She had knotted a thin dupatta around her neck in a manner that left her shoulders bare.
    She settled cross-legged on a large cushion, her chappals kicked away in a corner. She was close enough that he could lean over and touch her. Anand was conscious of the presence of his wife and of all the other people on the verandah, the other couple who had just arrived, Amir pouring drinks before rejoining Kavika and Amrita in conversation. He schooled his face to polite indifference, and perhaps he overdid it, for eventually he heard Vidya’s voice at his ear: “Oh my god, at least
try
to appear interested!”
    “Amir, I’m stunned that I was able to reach your house without paying