The moth

Pappachi cares greatly about appearances. When visitors come, he sits in the verandah sewing buttons onto his shirts, to make people think Mammachi neglects him. (In fact, no buttons are missing.)

He buys a sky-blue Plymouth car, and allows nobody else in the family to touch it. He drives it around, sweating inside his woollen suits in the hot Kerala weather. The car is his revenge: a way to show his importance, and to keep his family out.

Why is he so bitter? Pappachi was an entomologist (a scientist who studies insects). Long ago, a moth fell into his drink one evening, and he believed he had discovered a new species. But the experts said it was only an unusual race of a species that was already known.

Years later, after he had retired, the moth was finally declared a new species. But it was named after a junior officer whom Pappachi disliked. He never got over the lost honour.

He wore a three-piece suit every day until he died of a heart attack. Mammachi, too, had once shown great talent on the violin; but when her teacher praised her gift, Pappachi ended her lessons.

A lost honour poisons a whole family's life.