Even though he was from Tholur, nothing in his speech betrayed that. Kumaresan’s mother often said to him, ‘Bhai Anna, you don’t feel like a person from another place at all. You are just like one of us in this village. The only difference is that you go down on your knees every now and then to pray to Allah.’

And he agreed. ‘After all the time I have spent in your village, even my speech sounds like it belongs here.’

He had his own way of addressing people. All women were ‘amma’. And though he knew that the villagers called Kumaresan ‘Nōndi’, he preferred ‘Kumaresa’ or ‘little brother Kumaresu’. In fact, it was because of Bhai Anna that Kumaresan first went to Tholur.

Apart from the dhoti and shirt that he wore at any given time, Bhai Anna had no other clothes in his possession. If he heard that someone was drawing water from the well in a field somewhere, he would go there, take off his clothes, remove the towel tied around his head, and wear it like a loin cloth. Then he would wash his shirt and underpants that had large pockets to keep money in. After soaking them in the water, he would beat them on the rocks and hang them on a tree to dry. Then he would step down into the canal and have his bath, all the while talking to the man drawing water from the well. Since he was not fond of a quick, crow-like sprinkling of water, he spent a lot time pouring water over himself repeatedly. Watching him scrub away at himself, someone would make fun of him: ‘What is this, Bhai Anna? Looks like you have not seen water in months!’

He would laugh. ‘I roam around in the sun a lot. If I stay in the water for a while, it cools me down. And this way my clothes also dry in the meantime.’ True enough, his clothes were almost dry by the time he was done bathing. And even if they weren’t, he wore them anyway, saying, ‘They will dry with the heat from my body.’ If someone asked him, ‘Don’t you have another set of clothes, Bhai Anna?’ he would say, ‘Yes, I do.’ But no one knew where he kept them or when he changed into them. But then his white dhoti and shirt, which had turned brown with use, would probably look the same even if he changed regularly.

There was not a soul who hadn’t said to him, ‘Are you going to build a palace from the money you make selling eggs, Bhai Anna? Why don’t you buy some clothes?’

‘I have a hard enough time carrying all the work stuff. Why add my own luggage to that?’ he would reply.

He carried two wicker baskets. One couldn’t find such baskets in these parts. They were round and looked like boxes. They were woven tight with thin wicker strands. When he set them down anywhere, their square bases held them upright. They had a covering of mulch on top, and even had a handle. The mulch covering could be slipped up and down over the handle to open and close the basket, but it could not be removed completely. If the basket was empty, one could dangle it from one’s arm. And if it had eggs in it, one could hold it in one’s hand. People frequently remarked, ‘He carries his basket of eggs like he is carrying a child.’ He spread hay inside the basket in several layers, so that the eggs could nestle snugly without knocking against each other. ‘If even one breaks, it is not just the egg that is lost, but the very means of my livelihood,’ he would say.