The process took time. The prawn ponds were carefully tended. First, the spawn was put in and from the fertilized eggs, the nauplii emerged. These metamorphosed into protozoa which developed antennae, eyes and thoracic limbs—all the while growing and multiplying in their aquatic environments, keeping the workers on the farms fully occupied. The prawn farms provided employment to the villagers, many of them young boys. There were the older, familied men, too, who worked there. The tending of the prawn ponds, the netting and packaging for sending abroad were the tasks that engaged them. Before the prawn farms were begun, the villagers cultivated their paddy fields and cleared the jungle for their chenas. They had herds of cattle and buffalo which they milked to fill their curd pots. At night the animals would be driven into the jungle and then herded out the next morning.

But the jungles had changed now. This territory was ravaged by fighting between the guerrillas and the security forces. But so was territory elsewhere. It was always the innocent villagers who came under attack. The jungles became a place where they would seek shelter, fleeing from massacres or reprisals. This happened with all the communities that were embroiled in these violent events. The villagers would carry their few precious possessions with them and find refuge deep within the jungle, even at the risk of being attacked by wild beasts or bitten by snakes. Many of them died of snake bite but they still fled there at night. There were the sudden attacks, the brutal massacres, huts that went up in flames, the devastation of human habitations where the land was soon overtaken by the thrusting growth of the jungle while the people, displaced, had to move from refuge to refuge, from village to jungle to camps. Within the jungle there existed other networks of communication too. This was where the guerrillas operated from. They had their underground hospitals and storehouses for arms, ammunition, food.