‘You know, Korok, there are some countries in the world where people can vote for what kind of judges they should have. In some countries, they can even vote for what kind of government lawyer they should have. Here, the government lawyer doesn’t need to worry because he has the job already, so he will keep getting his salary no matter how much time he wastes.’

Korok didn’t know much about voting. Once in a while, there would be elections, and grownups would vote for MLAs or MPs or other Big People. The idea that one could vote for government officials had never occurred to him.

‘I don’t see why we can’t have it in India. If people don’t like something, or someone, they should just vote. Government lawyer is not doing his job, vote him out. Judge is corrupt, send him away. But we are never going to have that,’ said Korok’s lawyer, smiling.

Korok walked off to the chowk and waited for Bishto’s bus. Rattling back to Deogan, watching the villages and people go past on the road, he thought about Patnaik returning with his men to the Gond villages and asking everyone to leave. The Gonds would protest and protest, and nothing would happen. That is what Jadob had said. Nobody would listen. Not the police, or the Collector, or a government official or…

And that was when Korok got his first really good idea.

Why not? He thought, as he turned it over and over in his head.

Why not?

So he got off the bus before the bridge, and walked away to search for Jadob.

10

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER

Jadob lived in a small house in the village nearest the road. His door was always open. There wasn’t much to steal, and no thieves here. Except when the police said they had caught one.

Jadob was sitting at a small table, reading from a book. The table was usually full of books, mostly in Odia. There were not that many books to be found in the Gond languages. Jadob read anything he could get, and his friends from Cuttack and Bhubaneshwar, who sometimes visited, would get him all kinds of books. Stories and poems and non-fiction. Patnaik’s men had taken away most of them, but couldn’t find anything suspicious in them. The books hadn’t yet been returned, and were still under arrest at Balangir. These things took time. So Jadob’s table was mostly bare. He looked up as Korok entered.

‘Come in, come in. Have you eaten?’

People were always asking Korok if he had eaten, mainly because he was so thin everyone thought he had gone for days on an empty stomach. This was sometimes true.