‘But you said it goes down …’

‘No, no, the hanal goes down. That’s … something else. The life of the person is what the person really is. What makes her happy, or sad, what makes her live. I … can’t explain it,’ he said a little helplessly, but he smiled. ‘If I die, that part of me which likes growing flowers and herbs, that part goes up to Pogho Bhum. Yes, that is what happens. That is the life of the person.’

That was the strangest thing Anchita had ever heard. If she was understanding him correctly, what Korok meant was the soul went underground but the best part of the soul went up. She wasn’t very clear about souls to begin with. Ghosts she could understand and rather not meet. But this was … interesting.

‘So the life goes up? To heaven? Good things?’

‘I don’t know. Just up. Pogho Bhum is just sky … I think.’

They stood among the stones and thought about it.

‘But for those who are left behind, the stones are where the person’s memories stay. This is why everyone comes here, to the hanal kot. To talk to them.’

‘Do you come here every day?’

‘Almost every day.’

They stood in silence for a while.

‘Korok, can I come here with you someday and sketch this?’

‘Sketch?’

‘You know, draw all this. I want to draw the hanal kot, and the view of the river and villages. Everything.’

Korok smiled.

‘Yes,’ he said.

They came down the hill a little while afterwards. On the way they passed a short, thick piece of bamboo, split lengthwise and tied back together, on the side of the trail, under a tree, where someone had left yellow flowers. Korok said that was a pen, a small god, this one tied to the tree. There was a thick piece of iron inside the bamboo, he said, and that was for the pen. Anchita asked if they could open the bamboo and take a look, but Korok looked horrified and said they weren’t allowed to touch it. Only a priest or the mahji, the headman, could do that, and Anchita said she was only making fun of him.

There were, Korok said, hundreds of pens on Devi Hills. Hundreds that he had seen. There were some parts of the hill that even he hadn’t been to, so there must be many, many more. But these were minor gods. Even the holy saja trees were important, but it was the hill that was most important. She was the goddess of the Gonds here. They believed this was why there were so many medicinal plants on her. This was why the hanal kot here was the most important for many Gonds around the district. The two streams that flowed from the hill to Tel River were sacred water for the villages.