Melame stood like a condemned prisoner, silent and impassive. It was Eketi who finally broke the impasse. 'Eketi will go,' he announced calmly.

Melame looked doubtfully at him. 'Do you think you will be able to handle this task? All day long I see you loitering on the beach, drinking beer and coca, trying to palm money off the foreigners.'

Nokai stepped in. 'Puluga be praised. Eketi is cleverer than you think. For three seasons I taught him my secrets. But he has no interest in becoming a torale. He wants to conquer the world. Nokai says give him a chance.'

Melame turned to Pemba. 'You are his father. What do you say?'

Pemba nodded sagely. 'I agree with Nokai. If Eketi stays here, the welfare staff will make him their slave. He will be doing chores for the inene all his life. Let this be his initiation ceremony.'

'Yes,' Nokai concurred, 'the ultimate tanagiru. It will rejuvenate the entire tribe. And when he returns with the sacred rock we shall give him a hero's welcome, just like our ancestors gave Tomiti when he first brought the rock from Baratang Island.'

Melame turned to Eketi. 'You know it will be a hazardous journey, don't you?'

'It is a risk Eketi is prepared to take,' Eketi replied, sounding more mature than his years. 'It should be a risk the tribe is prepared to take. Our very future depends on it.'

'Don't worry, Nokai will protect you,' the medicine man said reassuringly. 'I will give you tubers which have the protection of the spirits, and pellets which can cure any ailment.' He stepped inside the hut and returned with a decorated jawbone on a black string. 'Once you put this sacred bone around your neck, Puluga himself will become your guardian. No harm will come to you.'

Eketi kneeled before the medicine man and accepted his blessings. Then he took off his T-shirt, ripped the tobacco pouch from his neck, and put on the jawbone which glowed like phosphorescence against his coal-black skin.

Pemba injected a note of caution. 'What if the welfare staff catch my son?' he asked. 'You know the hiding they gave Kora when he tried to get into the speedboat without their permission. That man Ashok is very clever. He can even speak our language.'

Eketi dismissed this with a wave of his hand. 'So what? I can speak English better than him. The welfare staff are fools, Father. They are interested only in making money. They have no interest in me. But how will I go to India? Eketi cannot fly like Nokai.'

'We will make a canoe for you,' said Melame. 'The best boat we have ever made. You will leave at the time of the moon of full dark. No one will spot you. Within a few days I am sure you will be able to reach the land of the inene. Then you just have to find that rotten egg Banerjee and recover our stolen rock.'

'And how exactly will Eketi find Banerjee?'

'By finding the green-roofed house.'

'Do you have any idea how big India is?' Eketi cried. 'It is bigger than the sky. Searching for one green-roofed house will be like looking for a grain of salt in the sand. What I need is something called an address. Everyone in India has one. That's what Murthy Sir taught us in school. Now who has got Banerjee's address?'

'Oh, we didn't think of that,' said Melame and scratched his head. The assembly fell silent.

'Puluga be praised. I believe I may be able to help,' a voice rang out. A shadow detached itself from the trees in the background and stepped forward.

The islanders recoiled in shock. It was Ashok, the junior welfare officer.

'Kujelli!' exclaimed Pemba, which was the Onge equivalent of 'Oh shit!' though its literal meaning was 'The pig has pissed!'

'I come in peace,' Ashok declared in fluent Onge as he approached the gathering. A clean-shaven man in his early thirties, The Tribal 49 he was of average height with a thin build and short black hair. 'I will take Eketi to India,' he said. 'I know Banerjee's address in Kolkata. I will help recover your sacred rock. Will you describe it to me?'

He took out a pen from his bush shirt and opened a thin black diary.

5 The Thief

I WILL BE DEAD in approximately six minutes. I have consumed a full bottle of Ratkill 30. The powerful poison is making its way through my bloodstream. It takes only three minutes to kill a rat; double that for a human. My body will be paralysed first, then it will slowly start turning blue. My heartbeat will become irregular, then it will stop completely. My twenty-one-year-old life will come to an abrupt end.

This is the time, Mother would say, to remember God. To atone for my sins. But what's the point? Lord Shiva is not going to come down from Mount Kailash to get me out of this jam. He never helps us poor people. He belongs only to the rich. That is why although I live inside the temple, I don't believe in God.

My late friend Lallan would have surmised that I am pretending to commit suicide to impress some chick. But this isn't a drama. And it isn't even suicide. It is murder.

Mr Dinesh Pratap Bhusiya is standing in front of me, pointing a revolver directly at my stomach. An expensive imported piece. He is the one who ordered me to drink the rat poison. Given a choice between dying by bullet and dying by poison, I chose the latter. At least it will be painless, though that watery brown liquid had a terrible taste; it was like swallowing mud.

There is a manic glint in Mr D. P. Bhusiya's eyes as he watches me die. Of all the Bhusiya brothers he is the most dangerous. I saw him the other day, torturing his pet dog, poking him in the eye with a pointed stick. In fact, there is a mad streak in the entire Bhusiya clan. His elder brother Ramesh is a serial adulterer, trying to bonk every girl in the neighbourhood, from the sweeper to the washerwoman, while his fat wife spends her time at the beauty parlour. And his younger brother Suresh is a serial adulterator, selling impure goods to unsuspecting customers. Everything in his general provision store on Andheria Modh is adulterated. He mixes crushed pebbles in pulses, sand in rice, artificial colours in spices, chalk powder in flour. He sells fake milk, fake sugar, fake medicines, fake cola, even fake bottled water. Come to think of it, it is difficult to figure out which brother is the worst. Partly because they all look like carbon copies of each other. At times even I get confused which of the three brothers I am talking to. Their father, Mr Jai Pratap Bhusiya, also looks exactly like his sons, simply an older model. It is almost as if the Bhusiya women have a factory where they have perfected a mould which makes succeeding generations of Bhusiyas look exactly alike. If you were to meet a member of the family in the street you would be able to say immediately, 'There goes a Bhusiya,' just as you would be able to identify a black buffalo in a herd of cows.

If only the Bhusiya women were as ugly as their men I wouldn't be in this situation. The main reason I began working in this house was because of Pinky Bhusiya, the only sister of the three brothers. She has skin like honey and a body like a BMW. All sleek curves outside and smooth upholstery inside. I saw her in the temple complex one day and foolishly laid a thousand-rupee bet with Jaggu, the flower-seller, that I would start an affair with her within sixty days.

Working as a servant was way beneath the dignity of a university graduate like me, but that was the only way to gain entry into the Bhusiya household. Luckily, the Bhusiyas were in need of a servant. As a matter of fact, every rich family in the capital is in need of one. Good servants are as hard to find these days as spares for the Daewoo Matiz. The fact that I lived on the temple compound was enough to convince the Bhusiyas that I was honest and God-fearing, and they employed me on a salary of three thousand a month.