Dileepan was back at the bank in fifteen minutes. Instead of waiting for the lift, he ran quickly up the stairs and went to his colleagues, and made a list of their orders. Two kilos for Gracykutty, one for Babukuttan . . . When he got to Hedgan, he looked distastefully at Dileepan.

‘Aren’t you an assistant manager?’ he asked again. ‘When I look at you, I am reminded of a large piece of meat hanging off a hook in a butcher shop.’

Dileepan told him that he was taking the day off and left without waiting for a response. Outside, he bought a sherbet, and as he stood there drinking it and waiting for the men, he imagined the conversation upstairs in the bank:

‘It’s as though someone has been putting kaivisham, black magic, in Dileepan’s wild meat,’ Minimol says.

‘Remember that time we went to Gavi on a day trip?’ Gracykutty asks. ‘It was like he went berserk when he saw the forest. Went knowingly down the elephant trail deep into the forest and didn’t come out till it was dark. There were king cobras there!’

‘He knows the names of all the trees and plants in the forest. And even the slightest movement in the bushes gets him excited.’

‘All the same,’ Hedgan chips in, looking wide-eyed at them, ‘he is quite diligent in his duties.’

When the men arrived, Dileepan tried to persuade them to go to a bar.

‘No, sir,’ the clean-shaven man—his name was Ajeesh—said. ‘That would be risky.’

He was alert and vigilant as though he was still in the forest, thought Dileepan with a sense of respect for the man. After a short, low-voiced argument, they bought a bottle of rum and got in the car.

‘I have a request,’ Dileepan said, carefully pouring the rum into plastic glasses as the car jolted along the potholes in the road. ‘Don’t bother selling to those ignoramuses who eat wild game and say it tastes like beef.’

Kurian, the moustached man, pulled the car to the side of the road. ‘That’s true, sir,’ he said, laughing. ‘To be honest, wild meat is not all that special, but no one will admit it. They eat it with the same satisfaction as though they have personally gone to the forest and killed the animal.’

‘But that’s the thing, Kurian,’ Dileepan said. ‘One must remember the forest when eating wild game, the darkness and the cold, and the hunter’s eyes . . .’

He was about to ask them whether he could join them for a hunt when Ajeesh spotted a police jeep on the road.

‘We must be careful,’ he said.

‘Tell them to get lost! If hunting is a crime, then eating is a crime too.’ Dileepan was angry. ‘Have you read the stories of Kapish?’ he asked Ajeesh.

‘Of course!’ Ajeesh smiled, thinking of the monkey in the popular children’s comic series. ‘There’s a hunter in it, Doppayya.’

‘I feel great sympathy for the man. He’s not been able to catch even a pangolin so far. Kapish won’t let him.’