He had good reason to be scared of the police. During 1980–85, Prabhakaran had spent his days sitting on the culvert near the chapel, convinced that a postman with magic powers would bring him an appointment letter for a government job he had not even applied for. In that time, his beard and hair grew so long that he looked like a revolutionary from 1970–75. And when people with the means to eat four square meals a day began looking at him suspiciously, he had an idea. He bought a postcard and sent an anonymous letter to Kuriachan, a local dignitary and one of the first people to establish a rubber plantation in the area. The letter said: ‘Leave five one-hundred rupee notes on the eastern wall of the church, and weigh it down with a small stone. Do this by 5 p.m. tomorrow or else! Naxalbari Zindabad.’ The very next evening, the police picked him up, sat him on the floor of their jeep, took him to the station and locked him up. Someone got him released from custody, but when he came out, his hair was cropped and his face was clean-shaven. From that day on, he began to talk in a measured and calculated manner, and people began to pay attention to what he had to say.

The knocking became louder and insistent, and finally Prabhakaran opened the door. In the fragile darkness giving way to a new day, stood Kaalan Varky, the local butcher. Sweat dripped off his body, and he looked very worried. A stench of stale tobacco from his uncleaned teeth combined with that of blood, soaked into his hands from the age of fifteen, emanated from him.

‘Come out and help, Prabhakara,’ Varky said, panting. ‘Call everyone. The buffaloes—the male and the female—to be butchered tomorrow have escaped! They’re running around all over the place. Come, quick!’

‘I am coming,’ Prabhakaran said. ‘After all, this is the land that worships a buffalo-slayer as god,’ he added philosophically.

‘Which god is that?’

‘Ayyappan. Sabarimala Ayyappan.’

‘That bull-buffalo came all the way from Andhra.’

‘Aiyo! Was it from Telangana? If so, he’ll definitely cause some damage,’ said Prabhakaran.

He meant it as a joke, but it was indeed the truth. The buffalo had learnt to skip and skitter by the fourth day of his birth. As he was entertaining himself, butting his head against the haystack, his master, Jogayya, who had just returned from the day’s labour in the bajra field, approached him quietly with a piece of cloth and a rope in his hand. Jogayya’s plan was to overpower the young calf and suffocate him to death with the cloth. It was what they did—what they had always done—in those parts. Bull calves were not allowed to live longer than a week because they drank up all the milk of the mother buffalo, and sent the owner into penury. The custom was to kill the bull calves, skin them, stuff the skin with straw and stick it on an iron rod, which would fool the mother buffalo into releasing plentiful milk thinking it was her son until, a few days later, she would forget all about him and keep on giving milk anyway.