Jadob spent the next week calling his friends in Cuttack and Bhubaneshwar. They would mostly call him back—to save him the expense, and have long conversations. They really liked the idea, Jadob told the mahji one day. They also said they would very much like to meet the young fellow who had thought of it.

The first thing that was needed was documents. Courts needed documents to work on. People couldn’t just walk into a courtroom and demand things. So Jadob had to hunt for all kinds of documents. There had to be papers to show when Devi Hills had been declared a forest area, and proof that the Gonds had been living there since before anyone came up with paperwork. There had to be proof that the hills were sacred to the villagers. And, of course, proof that the villagers owned land around the hills and lived right there.

Jadob’s biggest fear was all this paperwork could only be done at the big offices in Balangir. Which meant he had to walk back into the lion’s den, or Patnaik’s den, and everything would fall apart. Patnaik could make the papers go ‘missing’ with one phone call. Even worse, Behera could just say the papers had been sent on holiday to Bhubaneshwar or somewhere. The government could say anything it liked, and what could the Gonds do about it?

As it turned out, Jadob needn’t have worried. All these documents were also stored neatly at the mahji’s house, and at the houses of the other village headmen, so Jadob could just walk around and gather them up without going anywhere near Balangir.

Meanwhile, his friends in Bhubaneshwar kept talking and advising him. They also talked to their other friends in Delhi—people who were very interested in the matter, and knew a lot about the area, but had not been able to do much against the government’s might. This new idea gave them all some kind of hope. They knew a lot of good lawyers—some of them were lawyers themselves—and one thing everyone agreed on was the Gonds needed to file their request for a vote in a very big court. It wouldn’t do to go to the Balangir court and ask the magistrate to decide. For one, the magistrate would probably immediately call Patnaik or Behera and ask them for orders. For another, the case would then go to a higher court anyway.

Finally, they all decided to go directly to the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court in Delhi. One reason was time. If the Gonds went to the High Court in Bhubaneshwar, and won, the Company could go to the Supreme Court and fight it there. The Gonds needed to win, and quickly.