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lavanya Shankaran tells a good, old-fashioned story in her first book, The Hope Factory. It's a simple story with a beginning, middle and an end. It has well- defined characters and a few moral lessons to deliver. Sounds boring? It's not. It's a remarkably easy read that deals with personal issues of the protagonists, but in the context of a wider society in which they find themselves and where they must live, interact and to some extent, influence it too.
Set in the cosmopolitan town of Bangalore, Shankaran manages to show the dichotomies of the city. There is the face of development where young entrepreneurs can make quick deals while on the path to development; and that of lesser mortals who migrate to the city in search of a livelihood, just to keep their bodies and souls together. People toil, but they march to different tunes and for different motives. Shankaran narrates two stories that run parallel to each other, intersecting each other at various points - Anand's story and Kamala's story- both fighting their own battles of existence, albeit at entirely different levels. They both have ambitions of a better life. Anand K. Murthy, a factory owner, manufactures parts for autos, wants to expand his business for which he needs to acquire 10 acres of land, a hard-to get commodity in a city straining at its seams for space. Anand seems to have it all - a beautiful, social wife, Vidya, two lovely children, and a nice lifestyle. However, there is trouble in paradise. The difficulties in Anand's life are dealing with troubled relationships on the one hand, and with a corrupt bureaucracy, lazy polity, land mafia and thugs on the other.
While Anand's great challenge is to reconcile his innate decentness and honesty with the threat that he may have to give in to corruption and threats to achieve his ends, Kamala's hazard is that her one-room home is going to be acquired by the land mafia to build on it. One is in danger of compromising his principles; the other is a vulnerable victim to losing the roof over her family's head. Shankaran, however, gives us a 'happy ending'. There is a message that toil and honesty will prosper. Not didactic, but positive and nice to read, the story is narrated in a no-fuss way. The real strength of the book is in her representation of Bangalore, a city that's edgy, growing and industrialising at a pace that's almost dizzying for its dwellers.
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Kamla, is a widow with a
teenaged son, for whom she nurtures hopes of a good education, a nice
job. Her dreams are of a good, middle class life. But the boy is as
self-willed as he is bright and by falling into bad company, does not
make his widowed mother's life easier. Kamla, in fact, works as a maid
in Anand's house and must slave under the tyranny of the temperamental
Vidya, while she worries about her son.