Neither Joseph nor I was particularly impressed by this story. We felt that Asan was exaggerating things just to bolster his argument. It was my opinion that it did not take a king’s visit for a town to improve and develop. But I did not say it out loud; I did not want to get Asan all riled up again.

Perhaps Asan realized his story had not gotten the reaction he’d expected, because he simply got up and left—started walking away, without a word. I can still see it, the way Asan waddled away in the dark, folding up his veshti so high that anyone could see his loincloth from behind. It would be the last time I saw him.

A few days later, I finally got an offer for a new job and moved out of town. When I returned two years later for my wedding, I learned that Asan was gone. I was chatting casually with Joseph when he gave me some shocking information about Asan. Apparently, Asan had gone with a rich man to visit the Kataragama Murugan temple in Sri Lanka. He never came back. At first, the story was that he had tricked a rich Sinhalese man by promising to perform alchemy and that he had been charged for fraud and thrown in jail. Another version was that he had contracted cholera and died by the seaside. Just before his last breath, he was supposed to have said in a clear, loud voice, “There is no God.” Joseph told me that Asan’s mistress, that woman from Sandanpudur, showed up from time to time at his shop, cried her heart out, and took some money from him for her ride back home. She’d told Joseph that she had in her possession the skin of the tiger that Asan had shot with his own hands.

To me, someone like Asan could not die so easily. As long as we remember his stories, and as long as the people who hear his stories from us remember them, he lives in some way.

Over time, I heard from others how the big market emerged in front of the tamarind tree and how the western section of the town developed.