His name was Ramdas. He had been the headman of Nandgaon for — he said, with the particular vagueness of someone for whom the measure of years had become imprecise — a very long time. He had sharp eyes in his old face. The sharpness was the quality of a man who had been paying attention for so long that paying attention had become his natural state.
She sat across from him on a low stool that the woman with the clay pot — whose name was Sukhi, she would learn, and who appeared to be Ramdas's daughter or daughter-in-law or perhaps both, it was not immediately clear — had placed for her. The platform where Ramdas sat was in the partial shade of a large peepal tree, and the light came through the leaves in the filtered, shifting way of light through peepal leaves, which moved more than other trees even in a still wind, giving the shade beneath them a quality of gentle, continuous motion.
"You said two hundred and forty-seven," Meera said. "Is that the current resident count?"
"Yes," Ramdas said. "Two hundred and forty-seven. Fifty-three families. Some large, some small." He looked at her forms with the respectful attention of someone who recognised official documents. "You will want the names."
"Yes. And ages, and occupations, and family relationships. It's standard census enumeration." She paused. "How many of the residents are currently in the village? Some might be in the fields or—"
"All," he said. Simply. "We are all here."
