It should have been scary, but was not. As we proceeded, the headlights picked out solitary thatched-roof huts in isolated patches of cleared land. Clearly, the local Murias felt no insecurity. Habib Tanvir's daughter Nagin, who had selected members of his folk troupe from the area, urged us on. She had accompanied us from Raipur. After a long half-hour, more huts appeared and then the glow of an open fire burning in a courtyard.
It was a ghotul, the village meeting place where adolescents danced and got to know each other before marriage-a practice written about extensively by sociologists and others, some to endorse, others to condemn. Only a couple of young men were to be seen, but another rushed up to embrace Nagin affectionately. He remembered her from a visit seven years earlier. They talked in the Muria dialect and a traditional dance was promised if we returned later at night.