Among the siblings, Jordan had the most uneventful, comfortable and easy life. He was allowed to roam free in the four-acre compound enclosed by a big boundary wall. No other house in the vicinity had such a large compound. The only passage out of it was at the back where there was an opening that led to the cardamom grove next door, but Roy had extended the boundary wall and closed it after he brought Jordan home. Gorging on the plentiful food, Jordan put on weight and spent all day snoozing in his kennel. Roy’s wife and thirteen-year-old daughter enjoyed even better food and put on even more weight. No one visited except when Roy was in town, so Jordan had no cause to bark. Still, like a shipwrecked sailor marooned on an island, he talked to himself whenever he felt that he was forgetting his own language. On the other side of the boundary wall, grown men who had never had a sexual experience knitted fantastic stories about the good fortune that a pedigreed dog living with two beautiful women with no men around enjoyed, but Jordan was unaware of such things. As he put on more weight, he began to spend the nights, too, in restful slumber in the front yard. A quiet, easy life, the utmost good fortune an animal could ever hope for—he had that. Still, every year, around August–September, he would be gripped by restlessness. Listening to the soft barks and romantic chit-chat of the ordinary mongrels on the other side of the compound wall, he would run around trying to find a way out that he knew did not exist. One night, he began digging a hole in the loose soil at the base of the compound wall at the back of the house. After four or five days of hard work, realizing that the granite foundation of the compound wall went deeper than he had anticipated, he began digging at a different spot. And when that attempt came to an end at a rock, instead of feeling dejected, he tried another spot farther along. He did not give up even when his toenails broke from scratching relentlessly at the stony earth. In those months, his appetite waned and he lost weight.

‘What is wrong with this dog?’ Roy’s wife exclaimed, staring with puzzlement at the unfinished trenches all along the base of the compound wall.

On his next visit, Roy took his wife and daughter and set out on a little trip. Freshly bathed and with a new leather collar around his neck, Jordan sat in the back seat of the car. Beyond Kuttikkanam, seeing the mist roll down a hill, they stopped the car and got out. Jordan ran up the hill. He turned back and looked at the humans in his life, and barking his gratitude at them, he ran down the other side of the hill and disappeared. A week later, Roy brought home a Labrador puppy, and named her Sheba. He told his wife that he would have called it ‘Solomon’ had it been a male puppy.