The fortnight passed, and something surprising happened. The arrested Gonds were all released and came back home. Korok heard of this from the epho’s wife while he was walking around in his garden, still keeping an eye on the soil to check if a surviving weed was trying to poke its head out. In the evening, he went straight to the mahji’s house.

Some of the elders were still present, as was Jadob, and they were talking gravely with the mahji. None of them appeared much damaged by their stay at Balangir Jail, Korok saw to his relief. Patnaik had clearly not been treating them the way he usually dealt with arrested Gonds. With their return, Korok thought, the villagers could go back to defying the government.

But on everyone’s face, particularly on Jadob’s, was despair. From what Korok understood by overhearing the conversation, disaster had struck. Since he did not understand much of this, he caught hold of Jadob when the older man was leaving for his home, and asked him what had happened.

‘Korok, we have lost.’

The boy still did not understand it. What could have happened to knock the heart out of the agitation? Korok had not heard of anything.

‘Will we have to leave?’

‘Not right now, but no matter how long we sit in protest, we have lost.’

They walked on a bit in silence. Korok still did not understand, and Jadob realised he was too embarrassed to ask for an explanation.

‘See, Korok, after we were arrested, people across the country, important people, started talking about us on TV or writing about us in newspapers. They said we were thieves and bad people, because so many of us are or have been in jail.’

Korok, whose father, uncle and grandfather had all been in jail, and for crimes he knew they hadn’t committed, didn’t understand how this mattered. Going to jail was not the same thing as being a criminal, was it? But there were many things about the outside world he didn’t understand, and probably never would, so he didn’t say anything.

‘And those people also said we have been in touch with Maoists, so we are a danger to the government. There was some support for us in the big cities earlier. Now there won’t be much. Don’t you see? We can sit in protest here for as long as we like. Sooner or later, the government is going to do what it wants to, and we will have to leave,’ said Jadob.

They walked on some more in the darkness.