A skinny young boy from the neighbourhood came to look at the puppy. ‘Da, patti,’ he said, and poked it in the face with a stick. The puppy barked, making everyone step back in shock, then grabbed the stick with its teeth and looked cruelly at the boy.

‘Her name is not “patti”!’ Kuruppu gave the boy a hard tap on his head, and sent him off with a warning never to enter his compound again.

As the days went by, more and more people came to look at the puppy that had, by now, been christened ‘Noor’. The relatives who came to see Kuruppu’s newborn son showed more interest in the puppy that was the colour of polished mahogany, and spent hours watching her rest in her cage. Their experience with dogs, other than the local mongrels, was limited to the occasional Pomeranian, or in trying to imagine, on their way to the city, the breed of dog that produced the lion-like roars emanating from the palatial houses hidden behind high perimeter walls.

‘This is a German Shepherd,’ Kuruppu heard someone declare as he stood watching his wife and son from a safe distance, as demanded by customs of childbirth-related pollution. He did not feel the urge to pick his son up and hold him against his chest, and smell the top of his head. He was the type of old-fashioned man who thought such deeds unsavoury. He rarely even spoke to his wife in the presence of others.

‘No, no! It’s an Alsatian pup. You can tell by the black markings on its face,’ said Kora sir, the lifelong president of the public library.

Kuruppu wanted to tell them that the puppy was, in fact, a Belgian Malinois, a breed classified as distinct from the Belgian Shepherd by the veterinarian Adolphe Reul around eighty years ago, and that there was only one other dog of the same breed in India. But what was the point in trying to enlighten a bunch of ignoramuses who did not even know that German Shepherds and Alsatians were, in fact, one and the same!

More things that would amaze Kuruppu’s compatriots were yet to happen. A man named Beeran—they called him Beeranikka—cycled eight miles every day to deliver goat meat to Kuruppu’s house. Very few among them had sampled goat meat as it was usually only available where there was a sizeable population of ‘Kakkas’, as Muslims were called locally. Only two Kakkas were seen in the area—one a trader who came to buy dried areca nut and the other a man who bought and sold old brass vessels. People called them ‘Mothalali’ as though they were big-time businessmen, purely because they wore wide leather belts that had pockets stuffed with currency notes around their waists. Beeranikka cooked the goat meat with turmeric powder on a fire outside the kitchen, under Kuruppu’s watchful eyes. Noor could only digest tender goat meat. Kuruppu’s mother, although not fond of dogs, made her wheat porridge cooked in milk. Noor ignored everyone except Kuruppu, and ate only what he gave her.