Sankunniyaasan could not remember the last time he was alone with Madhavan. He stared at the dead man’s face. Was that really his face? He looked like a complete stranger.

Sankunniyaasan did not participate in the funeral rites the next day. He went into town, very early in the morning, to meet with some people. Later, he presented himself at the police station with copies of various legal documents and made a declaration. He returned home and had lunch, and then went to a piece of land a little distance from his house. His last legal altercation with Madhavan was about another piece of land adjacent to this property. He had tried to solicit the help of a couple of labourers but everyone had refused. So, for the next few hours, he toiled alone, taking apart the fence between the properties and moving it farther away to appropriate the disputed piece of land. By then, Vijayan returned home from the funeral, and someone told him what Sankunniyaasan had done.

‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘His son and I can solve the matter over a bottle of something.’

Sankunniyaasan spent the next day at home, anxiously awaiting some kind of response to his actions. By evening, he was taken to the hospital with a high fever and breathing trouble.

‘What’s happening?’ Raju, the newspaper agent, asked one of his relatives. ‘Will we have a news item saying “Arch-enemies die within days of each other”?’

THE BEGINNING

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Vintage is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

This collection published 2021

Copyright © S. Hareesh 2021

Translation copyright © Jayasree Kalathil 2021

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Jacket images © Anubha Jain

This digital edition published in 2021.

e-ISBN: 978-9-354-92160-5

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