‘Next time I’m going to get Kapish,’ Kurian said, starting the car and stepping on the accelerator.

‘I saw a woman with you in the car the other day . . .’

‘Yes, we picked her up to avoid police checking. We spend all the money we make from this on women and drinks. We don’t take it home.’

‘Well, it is money cursed by poor voiceless creatures, after all,’ Dileepan joked.

The car heated up like a rock in the summer sun. Even the sparse grass at the verges was dry despite the slight rain of the previous night. A lone rabbit wandered into the grass, licked its mouth and disappeared again. Dileepan inhaled the aroma of blood mixed with turmeric powder. The meat parcels were liberally sprinkled with the stuff to avoid detection by sharp-nosed forest guards. The edges of Dileepan’s trousers were soaked in the blood that had leaked and pooled under the seat.

‘This is a forest with no undergrowth,’ Kurian said as the car entered a rich neighbourhood. ‘Like in the comics, all neatly laid out with animals that speak and monkeys that wear clothes. Some even have magic powers.’ He pulled up in front of a house where a man was waiting for them. ‘And here we have a bear,’ he said.

As Kurian handed over a parcel, Dileepan watched the expression on the man’s face, reverential as though he was turning the pages of a children’s book. He imagined Kurian drawing a double-barrelled gun from the air and shooting down the bear. The bear falls, only to come alive again in the next story.

Soon, it was dark. They abandoned the car and went into the deep forest on horseback. They stood silently by the side of a hill watching the shola forest frozen in the moonlight. A low growl emerged, agitating the horses, and they charged into the forest holding aloft their swords and spears. Dileepan wished those who knew him could see him then. He was always in front of an invisible, imagined, female spectator.

In the night, Dileepan’s wife sat next to him as though he was a pitiable villain. ‘Yesterday Cecily asked me whether my husband has started a side business of selling wild meat,’ she said. ‘You and your friends have been to her house three times in two months, she said.’

‘Well, that woman is the type who says Taj Mahal is a cemetery,’ he retorted angrily.

‘I told her that you were an animal lover. That time when you saw a rabbit being killed . . . You cried, remember?’

‘I don’t remember,’ Dileepan said, embarrassed.

‘I don’t forget anything,’ his wife continued without sparing any of the details. ‘Once you paid a lot of money and bought a dried-up head of a wild buffalo. And you nagged me to give our firstborn the strange name “Jim Corbett”.’

Annoyed, he got up and began playing with his children.

‘I’m a fierce, man-eating tiger,’ he said.

‘Bang! Bang! Bang . . . !’ They shot him down.