And here, too, sitting on the steps, was Bishto. He was the same age as Korok but he was the handyman and conductor for the bus and lived in it. Where he came from, Korok didn’t know. It was even said that he was born with the bus, but that would make him very old.

Bishto had the thinnest arms anyone had ever seen. They said Korok also had thin arms. In fact, if anyone was looking for Korok in Deogan village, people would say: ‘That boy with the thin arms? He’s over there.’ That was how the villagers knew him, that and his garden. But Bishto’s arms were sticks, and he had just one hand. The other, it was said, he had lost when he picked up a bomb from the railway track across the river. That was just what they said. It is possible that Bishto was born with one hand. Besides, to get to the railway track, even an infant Bishto would have to get off the bus and cross the river, and Bishto never left the bus. But two arms or one, Bishto kept his place on the bus and never forgot to get the fares from his many passengers. One arm and two eagle eyes—that was Bishto.

Korok got on board after the other passengers.

‘To Balangir, to meet your father?’ asked Bishto at the steps, eating a ripe guava, his other arm around the handrail, and Korok nodded.

He had a folded, crumpled five-rupee note, the bus fare, but Bishto shook the guava at him and waved him in. Nobody took money from Korok, not in his village. In Balangir they took everything.

‘You pay the fare when your father comes from Balangir, not when you go there,’ said Bishto, smiling at his guava, before he hammered on the side of the bus and told the driver: ‘Go.’

Korok took his seat at the back of the bus. He had with him an aluminium tiffin box with rotis and vegetables for his father that he had cooked himself. By the time he reached Balangir town, it wouldn’t matter who had made the rotis; they would be just as hard and rubbery as the ones Korok had eaten in the morning. But the important thing was he was taking them to his father.