But to Asan, the casuarina grove was comparable to heaven. It was an experience of utmost delight for him to spend time alone in the grove, the lone inhabitant of the kingdom of solitude, watching the casuarina trees’ rapturous dance. The sight must have kindled Asan’s peculiar taste in things. He always said he was more entranced by the terrifying face of Kali—the goddess of time and death—than by the gentle goddess Kanyakumari. If he found petrol lying spilled, casting its liquid rainbow on the road, he’d stop to take in the smell: “Ah! What a pleasant smell,” he’d say before walking away. He once told us: “Everyone keeps saying the same old things, that flowers are fragrant, that sandalwood is fragrant. But the scent that hits you when rain drizzles on red earth when it’s all dried and cracked and dusty—ah! Looks like only snakes and I have the proper sense of smell.”

It was no surprise, then, that the casuarina grove pulled at him like a magnet. Whenever Damodara Asan spoke about the casuarina grove with great fondness, he seemed like a child turning its favorite candy in its mouth over and over, anxious to make it last. “Aha! The darkness there is so cool and comforting,” he said. Apparently, he’d been there innumerable times in the past to sleep off heavy meals. “Especially if I have gorged on a proper wedding feast, complete with vadai and pradhaman, then the next thing I know the casuarina grove would tug at my feet. Once I go there and collapse, that’s it. When I wake up, I have to ask someone to find out what day it is.”

“It was quite windy there, wasn’t it?” someone said, spurring him on.

“Dei! Don’t call it wind; call it a breeze,” Asan said. “Aha! What a wonderful breeze! It was like being stroked with pure silk. It was like baskets and baskets of jasmine flowers showering on you,” he said, stacking up similes.

It was from Asan that we learned about the casuarina grove—how, in the full heat of the day, even with the sun beating down overhead, it cleverly kept a little bit of the night trapped within itself.