Sunny wet his pants and ran back to class, Peter sir said. ‘Every year he comes to see me, for Onam and for Christmas, with a bottle or two. He is too respectful to join me. He only stands aside and watches me drink.’

At least once a month, a posh car would arrive in a cloud of dust, bringing some big shot businessman or political leader to Peter sir. Joppan chettan and I would be banished on those days. Elsa chechi, a sixty-year-old woman who had been widowed at the age of twenty, would be in the kitchen, preparing pidi and chicken curry for them. When Mary teacher was alive, Elsa chechi used to help her in the kitchen.

Once, with some evil intent on my part, I had asked Elsa chechi: ‘How is Peter sir these days?’

‘It is good that the poor soul departed early,’ she told me, thinking of Mary teacher. ‘He’s on his last legs. Still, it won’t be easy shutting the lid of the coffin!’

‘Why do all these people come to see you?’ I asked Peter sir.

‘The new deputy superintendent of police . . . You know what he said? That they become braver if they sit and have a drink with me. When he was my student, I boxed his ears with a pinch of sand between my fingers for good measure. The scar is still there!’

‘Have you ever eaten game meat?’ I asked my next usual question, winking surreptitiously at Joppan chettan.

‘Have I? Ha! There’s nothing I haven’t eaten—deer, wild boar, wild buffalo, snake . . .’

‘Even dog meat?’

‘Yes, once . . . In Assam. It’s like goat meat, only a bit tougher.’

‘Is there no place you haven’t been to?’ I made my next move.

My question set him off again.

‘What, you think like you I’ve been running around in my loincloth in this back end of nowhere?’ he asked. ‘Before I got married, I travelled all around India. Afterwards, too. With Matathil Shaji. We used to buy cheap, second-hand cars from Haryana and Kolkata, drive them all the way to Ernakulam and sell them for a profit.’

‘Did you ever drive through the Chambal forest?’

‘Chambal is not a real forest. It’s mostly rocky hills and scrub.’

‘So you must have seen Phoolan Devi, too!’

‘You remember Raghavan who ran away? I saw him in Chambal around thirty years ago. Must be dead now . . . He was doing slave labour in a cotton farm.’

Last time Peter sir said he had seen Raghavan, it was in Bihar with a preacher.

‘And in Europe you met a madamma who spoke fluent Malayalam, didn’t you?’

‘In Austria, yes, when I went with my younger son. There are barely any people there, only cars!’

‘What did you think of Lakshadweep?’ I asked, jumping straight across to the other side of the globe.

‘Just like our Cherthala . . . Lots of coconut trees and sand!’