But the inglees on their big white horses don’t seem to mind the rocks. Doddegowda has been trying to figure out why he should pay them chanda. What has happened to the Raja? Whoever he speaks to says that the Raja is also there but the inglees are ruling the land. He doesn’t understand at all.

The headmen of neighbouring villages tell Doddegowda that they are also paying chanda to the inglees. Twice a year, a person sent by them comes unfailingly for it, like the gumma. The problem is, the inglees only want chanda in coins, not in harvest. Doddegowda has to sell the harvest at the market and give it to them, and he needs more crop to get enough coins. Of course, he doesn’t tell his brother Sannegowda that he is trying to raise more money for the inglees’ chanda. Sannegowda has got his head turned and has joined the swarajya chaluvali, along with some other youths. They talk of a Gandhi thatha who is rousing ordinary hardworking people like them to make the inglees go away. Well, Doddegowda agrees, the inglees gummas have to go, but who will pay the price they demand to do that? Doddegowda is not willing to lose his brother over this. Sannegowda has already started wearing a white topi and speaks heatedly when anyone mentions the inglees.

Sannegowda also goes on about something called a Kannada state. He wants all the people who speak Kannada, living in far-off regions, to be part of it. Doddegowda likes people in general and he definitely likes it when they speak his own language. But where is he to get the money to support all these new people who will come in? They need land, they have to eat, wear clothes, build houses, find livelihood, survive … It is nice that Sannegowda wants to join hands with so many people, but he never thinks beyond the ideal. That is always Doddegowda’s job, as headman and elder brother.

Doddegowda’s problems suddenly get solved when Sannegowda gets excited about a new idea – drawing water from a well and pouring them onto the fields for the crop to grow, rather than waiting for rain. When he hesitantly raises the topic of acquiring land next to the wall, Sannegowda says that is a good place to dig a well and try his watering idea. Doddegowda sits back, happy to have got his way.

The banyan tree, however, puts paid to all these plans. Not even in their dreams will they uproot a banyan tree that sprouts on its own. It will bring terrible bad luck for generations. And whichever way Doddegowda tries to figure out the acreage around the tree, there is not enough, unless the tree is cut. He gives up. The tree grows rapidly and reaches a greater height than any other that the villagers have seen. And when it is 20 feet high, it grows a branch that goes, as though ordained, clear across the wall and puts down a root on the other side.