Korok knew next to nothing about mining companies. The government he thought he had some idea about, but what did he know of private companies, leave alone a big one, a company so massive and powerful that you had to call it a ‘Company’? The mahji had said that the sorkar forgot more often than it remembered. But would the Company forget Deogan if it wanted to make money out of it?

The world seemed very complex and Korok didn’t know how to think of these things. So he worked away at the flower bed and hoped, as the mahji had assured him that nothing would come out of all this. But, said a small voice inside him, Anchita’s wonder machine had warned of serious and complicated things about which he had absolutely no idea. And Anchita seemed to have a lot of faith in her machine. What if the kompitar was right?

4

MAY

More than a fortnight passed before anything happened. Korok continued in his garden, and the next batch of medicinal plants was particularly fine according to the epho, who had returned home for a while. He told Korok that a group of scientists in Delhi had thanked them for cultivating these rare species.

Anchita kept up her search on the Internet, but there was no fresh news, either from the government or the Company. Her parents, she said, also believed it was a serious matter.

But life continued as it had, and Korok had almost lulled himself into thinking it was over. Sorkari people had always visited Deogan, with schemes and advice, only to move on to the next village, or next grand plan. That was how the government worked, and Deogan carried on.

Once, he remembered, a group of officials and their assistants had visited Deogan with a scheme for chicken farming. They went from house to house with the mahji and handed out chicks to everyone. These chicks, they said, would grow faster and would be much bigger than the average Gond chicken, so the villagers would have more meat per chicken, and better eggs. Half a dozen of these chicks were given to a few families, with special feed that the officials said was brought from other countries.

The chicks did grow fast. What the officials and their busy assistants had not realised, because they were not poultry farmers, was the chicks were meant to be caged and fed their special imported feed. In Deogan they ran wild, ate worms and fought with the local chickens, which might have been smaller but were tough and could survive on anything. The feed got finished and fresh supplies never came. As usual, the sorkar must have forgotten about the feed. A particularly hard winter, and by the next spring not a single sorkari chicken had survived. The Gonds went back to their ordinary chickens, and the busy officials never returned.

That was how things had always happened, so Korok could ignore his fears.