After his father was arrested, Korok was introduced to the most complex machine in the country: the legal system. It took ordinary everyday people and ground them down, slowly. After years and years of a court case, a normal person could go quite insane. People would have to keep visiting a court while the case dragged on. They had to learn patience, and spend money on lawyers, on documents which the court needed. It was a big, massive wheel that turned at its own pace, grinding the innocent and guilty alike. There was even a blessing in these parts: ‘May you never have to go to court.’

After his father was arrested, Korok turned up in court with his uncle and Jadob, to see if the man could be released on bail. The judge was not surprised to see another Gond accused of something. Most of the accused criminals at Balangir court were from the tribes. But the police said Korok’s father was part of a clever gang of timber thieves. They not only cut down valuable trees, they also took them away in trucks without anybody noticing.

The judge asked: Where was the truck?

The police said: It hadn’t been found.

Where was the timber?

In the truck. Which hadn’t been found.

Where were the other members of this clever, clever gang?

They hadn’t been found either, the policemen told the judge. And, they added, Korok’s father had refused to tell them where the rest of the gang was.

This, said the judge, was a serious matter. Korok’s father was clearly a dangerous gangster and could not be given bail. Even if he was set free, because the stolen timber was so valuable, the amount to be paid if he was to get bail was so high that Korok or his uncle could just not afford it. So Korok’s father went to Balangir Jail and stayed there. He would sometimes be brought to court, but no progress was made in the case, and police kept saying the man refused to tell them where the gang or the timber was. Korok knew his father knew nothing about this. But there was a court, and there was the law, so that was how things remained for months and months.

And because Korok’s father was so poor, he could not afford a lawyer of his own. So the court appointed him a lawyer, to be paid by the government. This lawyer was called ‘friend of the court’. This was a translation of a term from another language, a very old one, which Korok didn’t understand at all. But he had discovered that this language was used a lot in the law, and by the judge. It was the same language in which the scientific names of his plants and flowers were written, but for Korok it was as alien as English.