The Hope Factory by Lavanya Sankaran Page B

guests on Wednesday evening. But why should she go anywhere without permission?”
    Thangam and Kamala maintained a prudent silence.
    THE HARSH BLUE MORNING SKY was curtained by evening with cooling gray clouds, ponderous and heavy, timing their guttered waterfall for the precise moment when Kamala was to walk home. She dithered reluctantly for a few minutes before venturing forth, a large plastic shopping bag cut open on one side and placed over her head. She would be soaked through, but after such a day she was desperate to return to her own home.
    The rain embraced her as she stepped out, fat drops slapping against the plastic on her head and clinging to her saree at her hips. Kamala concentrated on where she placed her feet; the clouds had eliminated twilight, plunging the world straight into the dark of night, barely illumined by the weak light of the distant streetlamp, and she did not want to slip on the broken pavements, their jagged edges angled, waiting, treacherous.
    A shadow moved next to her. There stood Narayan, holdingan umbrella proudly. “I thought you might be returning home now.” He placed a protective arm about his mother’s shoulders, holding the umbrella over her head.
    “Where did you get this, child?” she asked, amazed. “To waste money on such a thing!”
    “It was available cheap, Mother. At that corner shop,” he said. “It folds up and you may carry it every day in your bag…. Have you heard the latest news? You will never guess!”
    She would have kissed him if he was but a little younger; she contented herself with listening to his chatter, relishing the warmth of the arm that held her close.
    “What news? Tell me. I cannot guess. Very well then … Did that Ganesha trip over a stone and break his leg? … No? Perhaps the landlord’s wife has delivered twins…. No? Well then?”
    “That Chikkagangamma who lives opposite has been captured by a ghost!” Narayan nodded at his mother. “Do not look so disbelieving—she was seized by the ghost in the middle of the night—her own children told me so!”
    “What, those two little fools? They are seven and eight years old, what do they know of ghosts?” Chikkagangamma was a shiftless woman who combined an inability to hold jobs with certain morally dubious proclivities that Kamala would not consider discussing with her son.
    “In the middle of the night, the ghost entered her body; she began to scream and vomit and act very strange…. Their uncle came in the morning and whisked her away, while you were at work. He told them that he would be taking her to a temple so that the priest could say the right prayers to drive the ghost away!”
    This astonishing story was later confirmed around the neighborhood—and just when Kamala began to ponderthe possibilities of the vengeful ghost, freed by prayer from Chikkagangamma’s brain, searching for a new soul to possess and lighting on Kamala or her son—the landlord’s mother disabused her of her notions.
    “Ghost!” the old lady said. “Nonsense! Is that the story they are spreading? That foolish woman—you know her bad habits—could not squeeze the money she wanted out of the latest fellow she is consorting with, so she attempted to drown her sorrows in an unseemly amount of alcohol. She merely had a drunken fit in the middle of the night. That is all.”
    “The priest?”
    “There is no priest. Her brother has taken her away to prevent her from drinking more. He has left those children in the care of the corner tiffin canteen—they are to sleep there and earn their keep by doing the washing.”
    It was a sad story of neglectful motherhood, but Kamala’s primary emotion was one of relief that there was no ghost wandering about, looking for an unwary home. Just to be on the safe side, she added an extra fervor to her usual evening pooja, praying for the well-being of her son and for her job and the security it provided.
    IF, IN THE INTERSTICES of a disturbed night, Kamala