Korok approached the inspector, who looked up from licking his fingers to turn the pages.

‘Inspector-sir, I have come about my father’s bicycle …’

The inspector stared at Korok, as if he had never heard words like ‘father’ and ‘bicycle’ in his life. Korok had met him before, but then there were many Gond boys visiting the police station all the time, and this wasn’t his village.

‘What bicycle? Who stole it? Why do you buy bicycles if you let someone steal them all the time?’

‘Inspector-sir, no, my father was arrested for timber smuggling, I’m from Deogan, his bicycle is here outside. I was told I could take it home …’

The inspector looked down and flipped the pages rapidly, looking for the solution to some great mystery within them. ‘You have to wait for Patnaik-sir, he will be here soon. Only he can give you permission to take it away. Go sit over there and wait for him. Chickens and bicycles! We have better things to do …’

Korok did not have to wait for long because a car screeched to a stop outside, a warning honked from its horn, and the might and majesty of the law, the great and terrible Superintendent of Police of Balangir district, S. Patnaik, rushed in.

‘S. Patnaik’ was what it said in white capital letters on the polished and shiny rectangle of black plastic pinned on his chest. Some said it stood for ‘Sanjay’, but others said this was not true at all for a man who was the biggest police officer of the district and among the most powerful men in those parts. He was government personified, and how could such a godlike person have a simple name like ‘Sanjay’? They said the ‘S’ actually stood for ‘Sorkari’, if not something much worse. Yet others, the older people, said if his name was indeed ‘Sorkari’ there couldn’t be a worse name than that.

Now, if this was a different kind of story, the kind where people’s natures are seen in their bodies, Patnaik would be a fat man with three chins, an evil moustache and a squint. Not that a moustache by itself is evil, but some moustaches fit that sort of person. But this is not that kind of story, so Patnaik was as his mother expected him to be when he was growing up.