‘You see, the other ministry, of forests, is going to file a report. It will just be a report. Another report by the government. Nobody cares about us. So the judges will read the report. It doesn’t matter what the ministry says. What will it say? It is a ministry of forests, so it will say the trees are green, and the Gonds have cared about the hills. That is all. The court will say, sorry, that is not enough, and the police are right, the Gonds might start fighting the government, so we should allow the government to build a mine. The Gonds will get jobs and won’t fight the government if there is a mine. So we have lost. We will have to leave. It is just a matter of time.’

Korok took a while to understand what Jadob was saying, but in the end, he saw Jadob was right. It would just be a government report and the Gonds could not hope to get justice.

As the other headmen started arriving, Korok slowly edged out of the house and walked off to the epho’s garden. He sat among his flower beds for some time. Finally, he took a small trowel and the water sprinkler and began poking around the flowers aimlessly.

The weeds had returned. After all the work he had done, as the coldest days passed and the ground softened in the sun, the weeds had returned from hiding under the ground. Korok could never win against them. After pulling out a few of the bigger ones, he felt very tired, and felt like crying, so he threw the trowel away and sat on the ground.

Jadob was right. Nobody cared about the Gonds. The central and state governments certainly did not. Patnaik, of course, hated every Gond in Balangir. Everyone just saw chances and opportunities to use the Gonds. The police saw Gonds as people to be arrested for crimes they didn’t commit. The Company saw metals under their land. The government saw money. Even the Red Brothers saw, in the Gonds, a chance to fight the government and get people to take up guns. The politicians saw a chance to be in the news. And the government and the Company would keep on returning, again and again, until the Gonds lost.

Anchita had been right. The government and the Company were just like weeds, and weeds were …

What were weeds, really? Korok thought he must know. He knew all about them. So he sat on the cold ground and thought about weeds. He thought and thought for a really long time and even after the sun had gone down.