‘Uh …’ he said, smiling, ‘I can tell which is which. I will get some new herbs from the hill today and you will see.’

‘Can I come with you? I want to see the hill.’

Korok hesitated. He went to meet his father every week, and he went to see his bicycle every month or so. But he went to meet his mother on Devi Hills almost every day. He wondered if she would mind if the girl went with him.

Anchita saw him hesitate and thought perhaps the Gonds did not like people visiting their sacred hill.

‘Uh… you can come if your mother lets you,’ said Korok.

He went off to store the sprinkler and the flat hand trowel in the room at the back of the house. When he came out, Anchita was talking to her mother. The epho’s family members talked to one another in English. That, to Korok, proved they were important people. ‘Korok,’ said the epho’s wife, smiling. ‘How is your father? Did you meet him today?’

‘I met him, nani,’ he said, using the Odia word for ‘elder sister’.

‘Didn’t you say you were going to get your bicycle? Did you get it?’

‘Uh … no, nani. Patnaik-sir was busy and said I should come later.’

Anchita’s mother could see the welt on his cheek and was very sure it hadn’t been there yesterday.

‘Anchita, you come back before dusk, and be careful, okay?’

Of course, thought Anchita’s mother, as the two children left, she did not have to worry about Anchita walking around the village. Her main worry so far had been that her daughter hadn’t been walking around. Deogan was certainly safer than most neighbourhoods in Cuttack and the Gonds were quieter than most people she knew, except during festivals.

She had to be careful, she reminded herself. No kind of life is perfect, and it was easy for city-dwelling Odias like her to think of Gond life as, somehow, happier and better than their own. What was the term for it? Yes, the ‘noble savage’. That is, when more developed people who were not very happy with their kind of life believed that people like the Gonds were somehow perfect or better or less complex.

No one could be perfect, but the Gonds were, on the whole, such nice people to live with. And even that was a blessing.

Korok had found a shrub with white flowers growing under a tree on the side of the hill, which he said was chitrak, which he’d put in a plastic bag. He seemed to have a strange way of walking, thought Anchita. He just seemed to be wandering around, looking at the ground and the trees, with no apparent direction. Perhaps that’s how he walked when looking for herbs, but Anchita couldn’t imagine doing that all the time.