Korok found a chicken sitting in the shade of the kitchen roof. It wasn’t moving.

At the entrance to Deogan, the villagers sat patiently, ready to tell their story to anyone brave enough to visit them in the heat. Korok did not visit them as often as he would have liked. He was too busy trying to save his garden. The air was still and there was no wind. The sun beat down on the rows of flowers and plants. Korok watered them, and tried to loosen the hard soil. He touched the leaves, gently. When he was sure nobody was looking, he talked to his plants, telling them to hang on, to wait just a few more days. The rains would come and the soil would soften.

But the rains did not come. People came, and politicians kept telling the villagers everything would change. But the government was silent.

The Gonds heard of how other villages in the district got money to help them in the drought. But no help came to the Gonds. Jadob understood. He went to town and asked the government officials to show him the figures for the water table in and around Devi Hills. The figures showed everything was normal. Jadob knew it wasn’t, but the government only believed what was on paper.

The Gonds told newspaper reporters of how much they were suffering in the drought. But still the government was silent.

It was a short while after the two big leaders came and went that the tourists appeared. If the leaders were a brief respite of circus and comedy for the Gonds, the tourists were, in one word, a nuisance.

These were not the usual kind of tourists who visit places and such, take pictures and occasionally leave litter behind. These were political tourists. Unlike the big leaders from Delhi, they did not arrive in a rush and with fanfare. They arrived singly or in small groups, over days. Some had even arrived before the big politicians.

They were young and tended to look similar. The men had wispy beards and wore clean new t-shirts with drawings or English words which Korok could not read, but Anchita could and she said some of them were funny. Some had long hair, other had shaved heads.

They were from big cities across the country and had similar intense looks on their faces. They had heard of the Gonds and the mine and were there to protest, among other things. They came by road, by train and some, Korok was told wonderingly by other villagers, even by air. Imagine, people travelling by aeroplane to visit Deogan.