The elders and Jadob turned up at the main road two days later, in the morning, to wait for Bishto’s blessed bus. The mahji, looking sad that he had to go to Balangir after all, had dressed in his cleanest clothes. Korok, proud to be included in such a distinguished group, had taken a bath. With soap. In his case, his cleanest shirt and trousers were not much cleaner than his dirtiest, but they would have to do.

Bishto, on his part, made the driver handle the road carefully, with the result that the group reached Balangir later than they would have, but some of them were frail old men and glad to survive the bus.

At the Collector’s office in the cleanest part of Balangir town, the Gonds waited outside the double-storeyed and whitewashed building patiently until Rath, from deep inside somewhere, sent a minion to fetch them. Thus Korok came to meet the great Collector Behera.

Korok had been around a few temples, including the new one which had come up at Balangir chowk, although he hadn’t gone inside the Hindu ones. The most sacred part of a temple is called ‘the holy of holies’. That’s where the idol is kept. The feel in this inner room is different from the rest of the temple. If you pay attention you can feel the difference in the air. Or perhaps the difference is in the people when they enter this room.

That was what it felt to Korok when they entered Collector Behera’s office. Here was the most powerful man in the district, the one to whom everyone went. Big people with big problems, little people with problems their size. Most Gonds never entered this special room, though. They had to deal with much junior officials.

The room was clean. That was the first thing. The accumulated dust in Balangir town could have been used to make a small desert with a camel or two, but in here, it was clean. The walls were white. The visitors’ chairs were black and shone so much that not one of the Gonds thought of sitting on them. The desk was a large wonder of wood, topped by glass that reflected the tubelight. There was a small inclined stand on the desk, on which there were papers.

The Collector, Korok realised, had a table on top of his table.

And it was cool. The room was air-conditioned.

Collector Behera sat behind his desk. Here was another man with a neat moustache and the clean complexion and good hair of someone who never spent much time in the Balangir sun. A little fat but not as much as Rath. Even his spectacles gleamed in the tubelight.

Faced with such official magnificence, the mahji would have turned tail and run if there hadn’t been people behind him, and if Jadob hadn’t spoken up first.