It’s Birk’s idea to go to Salem. “Always wanted to visit,” he says. “One of my ancestors was killed in the witch trials.” “Really?” I say, instantly interested. “Well, no,” says Birk. “But he lived somewhere around here...” This seems a good enough reason to make the detour, so we do.

Bins tells us there’s a Salem in Tamil Nadu too. “No witches there,” he says, looking it up on Birk’s smartphone. “Textiles. Sago. Temples.” Punky, the skunk, who has become so tame and relaxed around us that we no longer tie his tail down to prevent him from spraying, stirs and looks around. Bins asks him what he thinks. “So, Punky! Isn’t MY Salem better than YOUR Salem?” Punky gives a noncommittal sigh and settles back into sleep, but Birk feels the need to defend his ancestral neighbourhood.

“I bet those girls were just havin’ fun,” he says. “They were messing around and when they were questioned, they blamed the Devil.” He’s at the wheel, but he turns his head slightly towards me in the back. I pretend to be asleep. Bins and Birk have been having a series of arguments of the ‘My Country’s Better/Worse Than Your Country’ variety. Bins says, “Ho! In YOUR Salem, they were making witch-kababs! In MY Salem, girls can run around with flowers in their hair and sing songs and no-one says anything.”

But Birk has been doing his own research into the facts and foibles of Indian social history. “In YOUR Salem, they didn’t need to burn witches coz they just used widows instead!” He’s talking about the practice of sati. Bins roars back with, “NEVER! Not in Salem, not in the sacred South —” and launches into a tirade against the savages of North India where, according to him, everything short of cannibalism was the norm.

Birk is of course unaware of the Indian North-South divide. Before Bins can present his fantasy version of history, wholly centred upon the “little Gaulish village of Pondicherry”, I tell them both to shut up, “—or I’ll put a spell on both of you, using my superior female powers,” I say, pointing to the silhouettes of witches riding broomsticks that have been appearing on road signs, as we approach Salem.

The small city is full of various witch-flavoured activities aimed at tourists. There are historical sites as well as hokey recreations of the 17th-century witch-trials. We bought Punky a cat-harness so that he can walk around with us. Hardly anyone notices that the black-and-white animal at the end of a smart red leash is capable of emptying an auditorium with one blast from his anal scent-glands.

Just for fun we decide to attend a faux séance in a make-believe church. We’re sitting in the darkness, while our guide pretends to conjure up the dead. A foul odour soon makes itself apparent. People begin to notice Punky asleep in Birk’s arms. But Bins confesses it was him. “Too much tandoori chicken last night.” Whereupon Birk chuckles softly into his beard. “The revenge of the North!” he says.

Manjula Padmanabhan, author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

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