Anchita told him later that evening that some of the news channels did show the leader eating at Korok’s house. But she also added, with not a small amount of joy, that the part where Korok answered the reporters’ questions had been edited over with the reporters’ own words. ‘So only your mouth moves like this: yip, yip, yip,’ she laughed, with her fingers and thumb forming a bird’s snapping beak. Korok hurried over to her house to see if this was true. He did manage to see for himself the next day, but it was a much shorter clip.

At any rate, he was left with the new utensils and the water pot, which he decorated on his own. As for his pinstriped friends, they vanished with the rest of the visitors, and so did their sunglasses, never to be seen in those parts again.

That was not the end of Deogan’s fame in national politics. After the news spread of the leader’s visit, a rival party got very interested in the Gonds and the bauxite mine. About three weeks after Korok appeared on television, a new set of local leaders and volunteers arrived. Among them were members of the organisation that had built the new temple at Balangir.

Not all of them were welcome in Gond areas. There were some, particularly volunteers from outside Odisha, who had a lot of strange views about Gonds. They thought Gonds were some kind of lost people who needed to be brought back and taught how to live properly. They frowned on some old customs. They also did not like it when Gonds ate beef. Korok, like most others in Deogan, was too poor to afford beef or any other meat all the time. If asked, he would have confessed he had only eaten beef at weddings. But it was custom, and it had caused problems.

The other party workers were professional politicians, which meant they were there to make the most of a news story and did not much care about anything else. Another stage went up, this one in a field outside the village, the area around the mahji’s house being too small for what party leaders said would be a big crowd. The mahji sank further into sadness, and party flags appeared this time around, too.

This time the television crews arrived before the big man and set up around the stage. Buses of people were brought in from around the district. It was said that they even tried to get Bishto’s bus, but Bishto, magical creature that he was, promised to bring it around on time and told the driver to take it up the road. Then the bus and Bishto vanished, not to be seen anywhere in the whole district till the next day. How he managed it was anybody’s guess.