Kook had come to his ancestral village for a short break, but the heat and the quiet had already started to press down on him. The old house stood at the edge of the fields, its garden half-wild and shaded by mango trees.

Under the house, where the wooden floor was raised on stone pillars, a cool, dim space opened up—part storage, part hiding place. That was where the 55-year-old chokidaar found him.