Korok had heard about it too. It was a little strange. The mahji had said, and he knew of these things, that the sorkar was building toilets for everyone. Toilets were being built everywhere. But Korok hadn’t yet seen one, at least in the villages. The mahji, being who he was, had a toilet, and the trader, being the richest person in the village, also had one. Nobody else in Deogan had a toilet. So wherever the toilets were being built, the sorkar had not yet started it in the Gond villages.

‘Jadob mastor says they are useless,’ said Korok.

‘Toilets? How can they be useless?’

‘No, he says they won’t help if there is no water. He says first villages must get water supply, and then toilets.’

Jadob had been trying to get water supply in the Gond villages. So far, he had not had much success.

‘Oh, what is this?’ said Anchita, holding up a nearly empty tube of toothpaste lying on the wooden shelf with a few other things.

‘It is toothpaste,’ said Korok, wondering what big city people used to clean their teeth. What did he know?

‘Uff, I know it is toothpaste. But, see, the name is wrong. This is very strange. I use the same brand … I mean, toothpaste with a name written in the same way on the tube, but a different name. The shape of the letters is exactly like mine, but the name is different. I wouldn’t have noticed if I had not looked closely.’

Korok had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. He had been using this toothpaste all his life, as far as he could remember. This was the only kind of toothpaste found at the trader’s shop. Nobody in any of the villages for miles around used anything else.

‘See,’ Anchita said, taking the tube to the bed. ‘The colour of the tube, the design of the letters, their size, even their colour. They are exactly the same, but the name is slightly different.’

Anchita’s mother used to work for an advertising company, so she knew all about brands, and marketing and advertising.

‘I knew it!’ she said, turning the tube around and reading the fine print. ‘This one was made in Chhattisgarh, by some local company. It is a fake toothpaste brand. I don’t think it even has all the things it says it has. Korok, you have been using this all your life?’

Korok nodded, and hobbled out of bed to wash his hands and mouth outside. He stepped into the kitchen next door and took out a small tumbler of water from the clay pot in the corner, which he took to the other end of the courtyard, near the fields, and washed his hands.

‘Where do you get water from?’ asked Anchita.

‘There is a well down this lane. We share the water, all the houses on the lane.’