I am sat in the coffee shop in campus after a month of absence. The very ill, malnourished dog whom I used to feed and pet remembered me and came to say hi. I was petting him when this man in green polo and specs with a prominent belly, probably a professor, came to me and told me that he has been seeing this “dog-petting” for a long time now and wanted me to go out and pet the dog outside the premises; I was sitting at the terraced bit outside the shop.
The dog of course did not understood any of this and kept poking his nose onto my arm for pets. I couldn’t do anything, so I just ignored the dog and sank back, quietly, into Crying in H Mart.
I was taught Basheer’s Bhoomiyude Avakashikal (Those to whom the Earth Belongs) when I was 15, and I had wept reading Vijayan’s description of bugs and vermin crawling in the grounds of his character’s place. I wonder whether this person who stopped me from petting a dog has ever helped a stranger pick up tomatoes which fell down from the split bag.