‘But it is wrong! Nobody cares about the Gonds, even when they live next door. In all this time, none of the children mentioned it in class, and none of them have visited Deogan.’

‘That is true, but shouting at them will not help. You have to choose your fights, Anchita. Otherwise you will just get tired. And now you have got a holiday. I guess you are happy about it.’

Anchita was actually very happy about not having to go to school.

They drove through Balangir and raced on down the empty road to Deogan.

‘How is Korok? I have to talk to him about some flowers the scientists want me to send them.’

‘He is well. They are all waiting for the result of the court case. Do you think they will win?’

‘I hope so.’

They approached the house and her father slowed down.

‘You should go and visit him. And now that you have some time, will you think about teaching him something?’

‘Teaching him? Korok? What can I teach him?’

Anchita’s Odia was not very good, although it was taught as a subject at her school.

‘You could teach him English, at least. Or computers.’

‘Okay,’ she said, unsure. She wasn’t exactly designed to be a teacher. An artist, yes. MMA fighter, perhaps. But teacher?

‘At least you could do something else apart from watching movies with him.’

‘What is wrong with movies? He likes them, and I explain the dialogues. Korok likes movies as much as he likes cake.’

‘Okay. I’m sure he does.’

Anchita got off and ran inside for her computer. Then she walked to Deogan to find Korok.

She made the best of her holiday from school. She sketched a lot, and walked around Devi Hills with Korok, and tried to find all the pens in the forest. For Anchita this had become a kind of Pokemon quest.

One day, when Korok was digging away at a flower bed in the garden, Anchita called him and announced they were going to watch a movie, and that he simply had to see it. It was such a special movie, said Anchita, that they shouldn’t watch it on her computer, because the screen was very small. So they had to watch it on the TV. It was a big rectangular thing, and flat. If it was any bigger it would be a small cinema hall screen as far as Korok was concerned.

The movie, he was told, was called Obotar. Anchita launched into a long and complicated explanation about the story before she started the movie, because Korok needed to be told all this, at least for some movies. Otherwise he got confused. She told him it was about a world on a different planet, and then had to explain a bit about planets. Korok kept nodding and trying to keep up.