‘Oh, many things,’ said Korok, still digging around the base of the plants. Senna took nearly a year to grow and the plant was very difficult to tame. You had to keep turning the soil around and make the top layer very loose. ‘Uh, old people use it for … joints, backache, hands and feet.’

‘So they eat it or something?’

Korok laughed. ‘You can eat the fruit and leaves. You can also crush the plant and get oil from it, which you rub on the skin. You can’t drink the oil, though.’

Old people weren’t the only ones who needed it. Senna oil was a common gift at Gond weddings. People would give bottles of it to the married couple with a lot of laughter and teasing. Of course, the oil, like all the other gifts, had to be blessed by the pen, the local god first. But Korok thought he shouldn’t tell this to the girl. She must be the same age as him, but probably didn’t know anything about married people. Besides, she was from a big city, and people there were different.

‘You get all these plants from the hill?’

‘All of them,’ said Korok, rising to get the sprinkler, with which he briefly—and very carefully—sprayed the plants and watered the base. Anchita saw he had a red welt on one cheek and wondered how he had got it. ‘All the plants and all the flowers. Some of them you can find in other places. But some, like that one—’ he pointed at a row of bristly red flowers in the next bed, ‘you only find on the hill.’

‘And you know all their names that are on the cards?’

‘I know what we call them. I can’t read much.’

Korok did, at one time, go to school. Deogan had a schoolhouse on the other side of the village. One school for the five villages around Devi Hills. And he didn’t mind going to school. But one day four years ago, when Korok was ten years old, the schoolteacher packed his clothes and left with a woman he had met at Balangir and no one came to replace him. So Korok hadn’t left school, if one looked at it. School had left him.

‘But … that’s not possible. There are dozens of flowers and herbs here. How do you know which is which if you can’t read?’

Korok didn’t know how to answer that question because it didn’t make sense for him. He could identify a flower or herb from its seeds in the dark just by touching them. He could read their names from their shapes, or find them where they grew on the hill. Then he would plant them in the rows where they were to be planted and put the cards beside them. If there was a new herb, he would check the cards for the right picture under the words.