It is April 1999, two old men are the first to reach the shrine of Gumang or Pat Kanda, outside the Gadaba village of Gudapada. They are the sacrificer (pujari) and the ritual cook (randari), the most senior men in the village in terms of ritual status. They have followed the narrow paths out of the village and through the dry fields on the hard laterite soil that has not seen a drop of rain since the end of the monsoon in October. They climb down to wet rice fields that are constructed in the bed of the river. After balancing on the narrow earthen division separating two paddies, they climb up again on the other side and reach the most important shrine of the village, consisting merely of a small roofed structure without walls, but with thick beams supporting the roof only about a metre above the ground. Below the roof, a single stone protrudes about 30 cm out of the earth, the local representation of dorom or the sun-moon deity. Shortly afterwards, other men assemble and clear the area of dry leaves and branches. Then they take the tiles off the roof of the small shrine and repair the wooden structure before covering it again. A few of the older men only wear loincloth, but most wear a lungi or dhoti and a shirt. One young man stands out, not only because he is tall, but because he is dressed in a bright red garment (Hindi: kurta). Once the sacrificial site has been prepared, the pujari ‘sacrifices’ a coconut before two animals – a cock and a goat – are ritually killed. The man in red is given some pieces of the coconut and leaves before the animals are killed. Later, he is not to be seen among the groups eating different parts of the sacrificial animals at different places. Did the man participate in the ritual or not?

Krusna Sisa, the man dressed in red, is a member of a religious movement known locally as Olek Dormo, and called Mahima Dharma in Dhenkanal, its region of origin. Ascetics (babas) probably came to Koraput in the early 1970s to seek new adherents to their movement.