He gave the door to the reading room another shake. Peeping into the darkness through a gap in the planks, he marvelled at the stories and poems that must be inside. Suddenly, a pleasant thought came to him. What if someone—a bookworm—was still inside, reading in the light of a candle? What if there was a mountain of books that he had read piled up to his left, and an even bigger pile of yet-to-read books to his right? What if, worried about his advancing age and depleting eyesight, this man was reading the books with a great sense of urgency? He banged on the door, calling out, ‘Is anyone there? Is anyone there?’ If he had a crowbar, he would have prised the door open, and rubbing a couple of stones together like the cavemen, he would have made light and read at least one book.

Dejected, he sat back on the wall of the veranda and tried to recall his schoolbooks. He came up with nothing. Even in the heat, a pale mist floated in and covered him. He sat silently with his eyes closed, and to his surprise, he remembered a couple of lines of poetry.

Atha vilangunnu bhavadganangalaal

Swathe chuzhannee panineer malarchedi

‘See how glorious the rose, already beautiful, with the fireflies on her.’ Lines that some poet wrote to entertain children. He rarely remembered things from the past, even the names of his friends. He leaned against the pillar. Still anxious, he adjusted his position and closed his eyes.

Was it a minute or a century before he opened his eyes? He tried to lie down on the veranda, but worried that his body was getting sticky with sweat, he sat up again. Hoping for a sliver of breeze, he stepped out and walked around, sometimes dejected and sometimes energetic, turning round and round in circles to his right and to his left. By now, he had lost all sense of direction. He did not know any more where the lane and the veranda he had rested upon were, and this fact gave him a mild sense of happiness. There was no use worrying any more. Deciding that the right side of his body faced east, he turned around slowly and walked to the south that he had just created for himself.

The sky above, studded with brilliant stars, was an upturned basket, and he lay down on the bare earth below it. Watching the basket, woven with the leaves of the screw pine, he thought about an old friend. He and his friends had once lain under the open sky like this, at midnight, while making their raucous way back from a festival.

‘Halley’s Comet will appear here tonight,’ his friend had told them, gravely watching the sky. ‘They said so in Eureka. Happens only once every seventy-six years.’

But when he saw that his mates were about to pee on him, the skygazer rolled away.

‘This will take seventy-six years to reach the bottom,’ said his friends as they peed into the deep, unused well nearby.