There was only one pond in the village below the Vindhya hills. In a good year it was deep enough for the cattle to stand in. In a dry year you could walk almost to the middle without getting your knees wet.

Nila could not carry two water pots at once. She climbed trees slowly and came down more slowly still. When the children raced to the far field she was always the last to arrive, and after a while she stopped minding. A boy called Tippu beat her there every time and never once mentioned it.

What Nila did was notice. She knew which trees the doves settled in at dusk and which ones they only flew past. Behind the threshing floor was a patch of grass that stayed green through the hottest months, and she knew that too, and where the ground stayed cool under her bare feet long after the sun had gone.

Walking home with her father, she would stop to watch a line of ants, or a lizard on a wall, and he would have to turn back for her.

“Come, Nila. You notice too many things.”

That year the rains did not come. The pond grew smaller every week. Soon there was only a muddy patch in the middle, and the cattle crowded round it, pushing one another for water.

The elders decided the village needed a new well. They chose a place near the centre so that everyone could reach it easily. Nila’s father dug with the other men for six days. First they found dry earth. Then stones. Then more stones.

No water.

They tried another place. Again nothing. Her father came home each evening with his palms torn and sat outside without eating much.

“If the rains do not come,” her mother said one night, “we may have to go to Dhanora.”

The stepwell at Dhanora was seven miles away, and it was not theirs. Her father did not answer. Later Nila heard him counting the brass vessels in the dark.

One morning she went to collect firewood near the edge of the fields. As she passed the old tamarind she stopped. Doves were flying down into its branches. Not one or two. Several of them.

She had seen those birds many times. When they were only resting they stayed high in the branches. These kept dropping towards the ground and going up again.

She walked closer. The earth looked dry and cracked, like everywhere else. But beside the tree was a narrow strip of grass, the same green as the patch behind the threshing floor, and it was not in the tree’s shade.

Nila knelt and pressed her palm against the ground. The soil was cool. She lifted a stone, and the earth underneath was damp, and small flies came up out of it.

That evening she told her father.

“I think there may be water near the old tamarind.”

He was rubbing oil into his hands. “The elders already chose the best places.”

“But the grass is still green there.”

“The tree gives it shade.”

“The green is outside the shade.”

He was quiet for a while.

“And the doves keep coming down there every evening.”

He smiled, but tiredly. “You notice too many things.”

The next morning Nila went back to the tamarind and knelt beside it with her palm flat on the earth.

Old Mallappa came along the field path the way he did every morning, one step and then his stick and then another step. He was the only person in the village slower than she was. He saw her kneeling there and stopped.

Then, very slowly, holding on to his stick, he got down beside her and put his own palm flat on the earth next to hers. He kept it there a long time.

“Cool,” he said.

Nila nodded. “And the doves keep coming down here. Only here.”

He looked up into the tamarind, and then at the cracked earth, and then at her. He leaned on his stick for a while and said nothing.

“Show me,” he said.

She showed him the strip of grass. She lifted the stone.

Mallappa began scraping at the earth with his fingers. A little below the surface the soil turned dark. He rubbed some of it between his thumb and finger and looked up.

Tippu was crossing the field with his goats. Mallappa called him over.

“Run and fetch Nila’s father. Tell him to bring a spade.”

Tippu was gone before he had finished.

By noon the hole was more than knee-deep and the earth coming up was wet enough to hold the shape of a hand. By afternoon half the village had gathered. Nila’s father was in the pit by then, digging with his torn hands, and he did not stop when the others took turns.

The next morning there was a small pool of brown water at the bottom.

They widened the hole, dug deeper, and lined the sides with stone. A few days later the bucket came up full.

The first evening the well was used, Nila filled one pot and set it on her hip. Her father filled a second one, lifted it onto his shoulder, and waited for her.

They walked home together the long way, past the tamarind, at her pace. Halfway there she stopped to watch the doves come down.

He stopped too.