Peter sir was intrigued by this game. I brought down a pile of old newspapers from the top of the almirah and began cutting out individual death notices from them. Peter sir joined me. I scolded him for sending the pair of scissors in his trembling hands over the dead in the pages and rendering around ten–fifteen of them useless. We put the rest of them in a cardboard box and sat down to play. Each of us put a ten rupee note on the table. I lost the first game. From the box, Peter sir picked up a Prabhavati, forty-seven years old, while my pick was a twenty-nine-year-old Unnikrishnan. Peter sir pocketed the twenty rupees. He won the next game too with sixty-three-year-old Eli, but in the third game I had an indisputable lead: Kuruvila, ninety years old, against Peter sir’s pick, Shaji, fifty years.

‘He was my student, you know,’ Peter sir said gleefully. ‘A terrible sort. He had been in prison twice. Many years ago, when my car burst a tyre on M.G. Road, he came to my help.’

‘Well, it’s the sinners who keep this world going,’ I said, picking up the notice and looking at Shaji’s photograph. It was one of those studio photographs from an identity card, the official seal still visible. He was a mild-looking man, and his eyes reflected the lights in the studio where the photograph was taken.

‘True, the baskets of the well behaved are always leaking,’ Peter sir said.

‘That’s not what I meant. The well behaved just get on with their lives, while it is the villains and the scoundrels who prompt changes in the world.’

‘I guess you’re right,’ agreed Peter sir. ‘If the Devil hadn’t interfered, we’d still be in the Garden of Eden, eating fruits and shitting, and wandering around naked.’

In the next game, much to my shock, I saw that the death notice I picked up from the box was my own. It baffled me, but I quickly put it into my pocket and smiled secretively. Peter sir also seemed to do some sleight of hand and smiled at me, which made me smile, which in turn made him smile again.

Winning three games in a row put Peter sir in an agreeable mood, and he went inside to open his fridge. He was, by nature, churlish, even towards the hapless beggars who came around occasionally, and I often had to find some way to mellow him out so that he would feel like sharing a bottle of something to drink from his stock.

‘Last time you had arrack . . .’ I said, looking dejectedly at the cheap bottle of brandy he placed on the table.

The other day, when Joppan fell out with him and left, Peter sir destroyed the pots and bottles he used to brew arrack, worried he would grass him up to the police. Joppan had a habit of taking off on some real or imagined slight only to return a week or two later, and Peter sir would wake up one morning to find him hoeing the compound as though nothing had happened.