The second man handed the photograph to the first man, who, although bewildered at first, looked at it and nodded.

Thambi offered to take them back to their homes, but they insisted on walking, saying that the rain had stopped and a brisk four or five-kilometre walk in the night was good for the constitution. As soon as they were out of sight of Thambi’s house, they stopped and burst out laughing. They guffawed, rolled on the ground holding their stomachs, sat up and hugged each other, and laughed like they would never stop.

‘See, that’s all there is to it,’ the first man said eventually. ‘We think these people are something special, and they turn out to be complete idiots.’

‘He sees John Abraham and thinks it’s Jesus Christ!’ exclaimed the second man.

‘Oh, you’re an even bigger idiot,’ said the first man. ‘That’s not John Abraham. That’s Sukumara Kuruppu. Many years ago, he killed a man named Chacko to fake his own death for the insurance money, and has never been caught. Everyone knows he was in these parts for a while, hiding in a forest officer’s house.’

‘No! That’s John Abraham, the film director who made movies like Amma Ariyan,’ the second man insisted. ‘He started the Odessa Collective that raised money from the public to make films. Everyone knows he had come here to collect funds from the estate workers.’

They argued diligently for a time and then came to an agreement.

‘Doesn’t matter who it is, really. John Abraham used to work at the Life Insurance Corporation of India before he began making movies, and Sukumara Kuruppu tried to embezzle money out of an insurance company. Crooks, the both of them! One tried to swindle folks into giving him money to make movies, and the other killed a lookalike to fake his own death and claim insurance money. Either way, it was not Jesus Christ!’

Laughing and holding on to each other, they walked on. At the base of the hill was a house, known locally as Ammini’s Bar, which sold home-brewed arrack and wild game, both illegal. The men felt that a visit to the joint was an auspicious end to their eventful day.

‘Amminiyechi,’ the first man called out, sitting down in the veranda. ‘Get us a couple of halves.’

Mirth bubbled out of them as they continued talking about Thambi.

‘If only people knew the truth . . . Imagine!’

‘He’d be the laughing stock of the town.’

‘Like in the movies. Villains always turn out to be buffoons in the end.’

They finished their drinks and walked on, eventually coming up to the culvert.

‘This is where Thambichettan met Jesus Christ.’

The place looked frozen in time, as though the passage of thirty or forty years had been inconsequential. The first man sat down by the culvert where, all those years ago, the carpenter Kuttappanasari was found dead. He picked a leaf off a foul-smelling plant, the last of its lineage, and smelled it.