‘Her legs have given out. We can’t get her to stand up now.’

Amma cried. The cow had been giving us milk for four years now. We had sold her once but she had come right back to us.

I fell asleep on the wooden bench on the veranda, trying to keep warm under a narrow blanket, and had a strange dream involving crying puppies and a beautiful woman. I could hear the sad howls of the bitch searching for her pups, sometimes in the yard and sometimes in my dream. So many deaths and a woman, all in a single night, I thought to myself as I slept.

Before dawn, Jose, the butcher, arrived with a couple of strong-bodied strangers, and dragged the cow across the yard and into the lane. They quickly loaded her into a truck and drove off before anyone could see them.

‘She was so brave, but when they dragged her over that stone, she cried,’ Amma said. Jose had given her five hundred rupees for the cow. ‘If she had given birth properly, we could have sold the calf for at least five thousand.’

I got up late the next day, took care of some urgent matters, and when the rain ceased a bit, walked briskly towards Peter sir’s house. The turtle was in a bag I toted in my left hand. This was the first time he was travelling through air. My feet sank into the soft, squidgy lane strewn with decaying leaves of rubber trees, and I had to lift them up with some effort. Last week when I had come this way, the lane was littered with rubber fruits bursting in the scorching sun. Since I was a man who liked to ruminate over things, I marvelled at the quickness with which people and the weather changed. Take Sreekala, for instance. About a month ago, while attending a funeral at a house, she had let me fondle her breasts. And then yesterday she introduced me to her brand new husband: ‘This is a relative of mine. His name is . . .’

At Peter sir’s house, we put the turtle in a pot of boiling water. ‘Looks like he’s laughing at us,’ I said, watching the creature scurry around. This was the best way to kill a turtle and take its shell off. Some people sit on top of it and press down, and when it pokes its head out in pain, they put a noose around its neck and kill it. I have seen nomadic circus people and ragpickers roast it in its shell on a fire, and then there are the cruel bastards who insert a sharp knife into the side of its shell and cut it open when it is still alive.

‘Not us, he is laughing at you!’ Peter sir corrected.

A white substance oozed out from the turtle’s shell into the hot water, and a smell of broiling flesh like in a cremation ground emanated from the pot.