‘Your father’s name was Sankunni. Do you know what your father’s father’s name was?’ Peter sir asked me.

‘Pappi, I think . . .’

‘And his father’s name?’

‘I don’t know!’

‘Neither do I!’ Peter sir said. ‘But this turtle would have known him. Turtles live up to two hundred and fifty years. That’s why he is laughing at you.’

Patting me on my back, he congratulated me for finding this elderly turtle. It was the Vaidyar, the local medicine man, who had prescribed this treatment for asthma.

‘It is difficult to treat asthma when you’re eighty years old. Only death will end the suffering,’ the Vaidyar had told Peter sir. ‘Try eating turtle meat. It might help. Cook it only with turmeric and black pepper.’

When Joppan chettan, Peter sir’s help, began to prepare the meat, I sat on the porch, picked up the newspaper that was waiting silently and began reading it. A corner of the newspaper, where there was an item about a servant who had murdered an old woman and made off with her money, had torn off in the rain. I looked suspiciously at Joppan as he stood chopping onions, with a halo around his dark-skinned face, talking quietly to himself. Joppan chettan was a peculiar character. He had first come to Peter sir to help with looking after the nutmeg and coconut trees. The compound was overgrown with weeds and scrub because no one would work for long for Peter sir, who had strict rules and demands. So Joppan began cutting back the wild vegetation and digging over the soil. He did not waste time chatting or smoking beedis. When he reached the south-western corner of the land, he felt a weight on his hoe as though someone was pulling at it from under the soil. He dug deep in that spot and came upon a stone idol shaped like a snake.

‘Your father, Manjappelayan, was also a Christian, wasn’t he?’ Peter sir asked him.

‘Yes,’ Joppan said.

‘Then there’s nothing to worry.’

As directed by Peter sir, Joppan put the snake idol in a gunny sack and took it to the west of the compound in the middle of the night. He recited a mantra and threw it into the canal.

‘As if they can get the better of us Christians!’ Peter sir said.

When Mary teacher, Peter sir’s wife, passed away, Joppan got promoted into the kitchen, much to the amazement of his own wife who wondered what her husband, who could not even make tea, did in there.

Peter sir saw that I was reading the death notices in the newspaper.

‘I only started reading this section after the age of sixty. You’ve started already?’ he asked. ‘One feels a sense of spirituality when one reads them, that there’s only so much to life, just as when walking through the emergency department at Medical College Hospital.’

‘I was looking to see who has won today,’ I said. ‘Today’s winner is a Krishnapillah from Mulankunnam. He was 104 years old. And the loser is a Kichu from Erumeli. Only a year old. Death by misadventure . . . Fell into a well.’