‘I’ve tried all kinds of alcohol, the expensive kind and the cheap.’ Peter sir seemed displeased.

‘All kinds? Even Johnnie Walker Blue Label?’ I pretended to be sceptical.

Irritated, Peter sir got up and brought out a blue, imperial-looking box. Unlike other liquor bottles, it had its own lock and key.

‘In the CIA, they celebrate the success of each operation with a bottle of Blue Label,’ he shared the secret that his son who worked in the US Navy had told him. ‘But this is not for you. An old friend of mine is coming to see me from Bhopal. He’s a judge. I’ll open it then.’

‘A judge?’ Having never seen a judge in my life, I was truly sceptical.

‘Retired. Quite accomplished too. He’s sentenced ten people to death.’

I hooted in happiness. ‘Let me know when he’s here. Not to drink with him or anything, just to see him.’

‘He’s very strict. And principled.’

Joppan joined us for the next game, dropping the only ten rupee note in his pocket on the table. It turned out to be a disaster. The death notice he picked up was of an unidentified corpse said to be above forty years of age. Peter sir got forty-two-year-old Krishnananda Pai, and I picked up Rejimon, thirty-five years old. At first, Joppan demanded victory, and then a draw, but Peter sir pocketed the ten rupee note and banished him into the kitchen. He left, his face dark with rage.

A few games later, Peter sir and I fell out with each other. I picked up Fousia, fifty-six, and he, fifty-five-year-old Anilkumar.

‘Anil is fifty-eight,’ he claimed. ‘I know because he was a student of mine. The newspaper got it wrong.’

The argument went on until, in a fit of rage, I grabbed the box with the death notices and threw it out. The dead scattered, some falling in the front yard and others near the kennel. Unlike the mongrels who howled at the sight of the dead, the two dogs in the kennel barked, sonorous and dignified. The bark of the older dog, an Alsatian, echoed off the walls of the house and in the well. Peter sir was the first president of the local kennel club. He had certificates proving that his dogs were pure breeds going back eight generations. Even Namboothiri Brahmins could not produce such clean certificates of pedigree. Peter sir had once told me, scratching the German Shepherd’s head lovingly, ‘He is pure Aryan.’

My excessive behaviour enraged Peter sir.

‘I came to know that you’re a writer only the other day,’ he said. ‘If I’d known earlier, I would not have let you into my house.’

Still furious, he told Joppan chettan a story about how he used to send my father, who was his student, to buy alcohol.

‘What sort of stories do you write?’ His voice dripped with sarcasm.

‘Fantasy, mostly,’ I said. ‘I don’t show them to anyone.’

‘What? Like the race between the hare and tortoise, and the story of the mud clod and the dry leaf?’