Two days later, the mahji, Jadob and the rest were produced in court again, and sent to jail for two weeks. The police was supposed to use this time to find proof that the Gonds were involved with Maoists. Korok knew there would be no proof, so he did not understand what Patnaik would get by putting the men in jail for two weeks, except happiness. News of this came back to Deogan, and those who still remained in the villages didn’t know what to do.

Over the next few days, some things happened across the country, which the Gonds had absolutely no idea about and would not have understood much if they had known. Some newspapers and TV news channels carried stories, with a lot of photographs, about the arrest of the leaders of the agitation for being in touch with Maoists. That was expected. But there were also some articles, or columns, in newspapers by some people who were supposed to know these things. These experts wrote that if the villagers were actually working with the Maoists, this was a very serious matter, and perhaps the villagers were not so innocent, after all. Maybe the government was right in starting a mine in the area, so the villagers would get jobs, and would not have to join Maoists.

Other experts mentioned something else. They pointed out that one of every five Gonds in most of the villages around Devi Hills had a police record. Some had been arrested and been to jail several times, others had been in prison for weeks or months.

‘There are clearly a lot of problems in the area. This is not a simple story of the government taking away the rights, or land, of innocent villagers,’ wrote an expert. And many people who read him agreed. Other experts appeared on TV and said much the same things.

Ghosh had been right. The police could beat up as many Gonds as it liked, but a few such expert articles or TV interviews were far more effective. While the Gond leaders stayed locked up in Balangir Jail, a lot of the support they had started to get in the rest of the country gradually died down. Only Jadob’s friends in Bhubaneshwar and Cuttack, who really knew the truth about Balangir district, refused to believe the news.

A few days after this, some rain fell in the area. It did not help end the drought, but the water level of the well in Korok’s lane came up by a foot-and-half, perhaps more, and the villagers were thankful for that too.

But with the rains came Korok’s greatest enemies, and for the next few days, he nearly forgot about all the troubles of the villagers.