Patnaik stared at Korok, amazed that anyone would keep him from his tea. Then he reached out and shoved the boy. ‘These Gonds,’ he said, smiling, to the inspector. ‘They think we are here to wait on them day and night, “sir” this, “sir” that. Get my tea.’

The inspector looked at Korok and away in a smooth, practiced manner. “Later. Come back later. Sir is busy. He will give you the permission letter some other day. You two, will you sit on that bench all day? Make a statement to the constable in the other room first. We have rules, you know …’

Korok walked out of the police station, rubbing his cheek where the slap had left a thin welt. He didn’t look at his bicycle as he walked to the chowk to wait for the bus. It was afternoon, and he had to work in the epho’s garden.

2

APRIL

Anchita was sitting on the verandah of her house. She’d just returned from school and had lunch. She was sitting here because, first, there was a beautiful breeze around here at this time of the day; second, this was the first house she had ever lived in which had a verandah and third, she had the best view she could find of the most beautiful garden she had ever seen in her life.

Back in Cuttack, where she’d lived most of her life before coming here, from her parents’ apartment at Mahanadi Vihar she could get a good view of the Mahanadi River as it flowed east to the sea. But a verandah is a verandah, and apartments don’t have either them or gardens.

This was an old house, which might have put her off if it wasn’t so different to her experience. It had been built, her father had told her, in 1935, the year Indian provinces were given the duty to take care of forests in their area. He’d said Hari Singh, who had been a big conservator and head of the Indian Forest Service when it was created had stayed here, and in the 1940s, Verrier Elwin himself, the famous expert on Indian tribes, had stayed here for many years, on and off, as guest. Elwin had been studying both the Gonds and their forests back then.

Anchita’s father was in charge of the whole forest division here, which was a big area, and he had many forests to look after. It was a lot of work. From this point to the north and south spread some of the thickest forests in Odisha and, indeed, in the whole of India. To the west, from a line of forest land between Patnagarh and Kantabanji, which was sixty-five kilometres from Deogan, began the great forests of central India, crossing the border into Chhattisgarh. But all that was only if you went up in an aircraft and saw the land.