Balangir wasn’t that big a town, nor did it have that many cars or traffic or people. But it was a distant world from Deogan village. It was a Big Place. It had Big People. It was where everyone from all the villages, Gond farmer or Odia trader, had to go to get anything done. Permissions. Paperwork. Fines. Taxes. Big Things.

At the main chowk in Balangir, the bus wheezed to a stop, that is, it slowed but kept moving by inches. The bus never really stopped anywhere and no one had ever seen it stop or its engine shut down. It was said that if the bus ever stopped it would fall to pieces and lie there and Bishto would turn into a parrot and fly away. This only proves that people had a lot of time to think about the bus and had covered every single possibility.

Bishto, the one-handed acrobat and guava-lover, leaned out from the door and said, unnecessarily: ‘Ei, Balangir …’

Korok got down and almost immediately a motorcycle went past, honking, although there was nothing on the road to honk at. That was just how things happened in Balangir. The bus went around the chowk and headed back out of town.

Korok walked along the fruit stalls of the chowk. It was puzzling to see the wives and servants of Balangir’s Big People at the stalls. In his village, people had their own fruit trees, and if you had more and your neighbours wanted some, they could have it, if they asked first. Of course, it was not always about sharing. It made more sense to give away what you did not want than to have it rot on the trees. So they would say: ‘Take the fruits, they are about to rot.’

But here the bananas and guavas and lime were put on display and sometimes the sellers would sprinkle them with water and say they were fresh. That was how Balangir was. A place where people said, ‘Take the fruits, they are so fresh.’

Down the road, past the shops and small restaurants. There was a new temple here. Very new, built by some organisation Korok had heard of. They’d put up loudspeakers and every morning and evening they would play religious songs in Odia. In Balangir, new things kept coming up, even new gods.

And so onward, past a doctor’s clinic and two pharmacies, to a thick, and very high, reddish brick wall. It was an old, old wall, but so thick and tall it was. When Korok was very small and had come to Balangir the first time with his father, that wall seemed to stretch all the way to the sky. It was a little shorter now, but not by much. Sooner or later, every Gond came to know it well.