Meanwhile, Vasuvasari, the carpenter, dragged his left leg ballooned with elephantiasis to Kuruppu’s house to build a kennel in the front yard. It was half the size of a bedroom. He had been out of work for two or three months, so he took his sweet time finishing the job, painstakingly turning the legs and sanding them to perfection as though he had forgotten that he was building a kennel for a dog.

‘I wish I had been born as a dog in Kuruppu’s house,’ he told all and sundry at his job sites and at the arrack shop. The arrack vendor had dumped the day-old tapioca and fish curry in a plate outside the shop. A skinny mongrel was lapping it up, holding the plate down with its front paw. Vasuvasari, an incorrigible joker, bowed to it, calling it ‘Guru’.

‘He’s the one who taught us carpenters our work,’ he said. ‘Look how he’s holding down the plate with his paw to stop it from moving. Just like we carpenters sit on top of the wood we work on.’ He stole a meaningful look at the shop owner’s wife.

One morning, following the advice of the veterinary doctor who visited once a month to examine the puppy, Kuruppu set out with Noor in a taxi with national permit. By then she was a year and a half old. For a month afterwards, in the silence devoid of her regal bark, people gossiped about what had become of her. Even the local thief, Satyanesan, began to feel bad about the time he had tested Noor’s mettle by chucking a boiled egg with a needle hidden inside in front of her.

When the car passed St Aloysius Church on Old Port Road in Mangalapuram, Noor looked at a two-storeyed house on the right and barked. She had been silent ever since they had left home. Filled with pride, Kuruppu lovingly scratched the back of her neck. In Tumkur, Noor was mated with India’s first Malinois dog, the six-year-old Malswama, and on their way back Kuruppu stopped at that house. Noor walked right in as though it was her own house, and lay down under the bed. As she watched with interest, the normally stern-faced Kuruppu talked non-stop in English with Polly Mathew, the blonde-haired woman whose house it was, helped her make omelettes in the kitchen, and had energetic sex with her in broad daylight on the sofa. Eighteen months ago, it was after a meeting just like this one that Polly had given Noor to Kuruppu. She had come back from the Philippines the day before.

Now, a naked Polly walked up to Noor and picked her up. ‘Her mother had two pups,’ she said, sitting back on the sofa holding Noor in her lap. ‘They looked exactly the same. My hand was shaking when I was making my selection. One was to live in splendour in America, and the other here in India, in this land of beggars . . .’