Renuka: You know it’s no easy decision, is it?
Narsimma: Won’t a tough stance make it easy for them?
Renuka: What’s that?
Narsimma: A Home Guard in a body-bag.
[Narsimma looks at Mallanna, and then he eyes one of the Home Guards. Exit: Mallanna and Srisailam with the Home Guards.]
Renuka: It’s atrocious to kill an innocent, isn’t it?
Narsimma: Sarakka why not see that Nirmalakka rests as I handle your restless vadina.
[Taking the cue, Sarakka tries to take Raja along he resists and cries. As Renuka holds Raja, Sarakka leads Nirmala away.]
Narsimma: Why don’t you understand Renu? The crisis calls for hard decisions. Besides, isn’t he guilty by association? After all, he sides with the system.
Renuka: But it’s his occupation to make a living. And he’s only doing his duty.
Narsimma: Sadly for him, his duty clashes with our cause.
Renuka: So be it, but they’re poor like us, and our struggle is supposed to better their lot.
Narsimma: It’s the price the poor have to pay in our struggle for them.
Renuka: What if they won’t yield?
Narsimma: They would have two more body-bags to count.
Renuka[She hugs Raja tight]: Oh, he’s just a kid as you and I were once.
Narsimma: But unlike us, he’s a potential class enemy. As a grown-up, won’t he serve the very system that oppresses us? But still we might spare him if that helps to secure our Madanna’s release.
Renuka: Why not hold out and see.
Narsimma: Why not turn the heat on them by killing the other guard as well. It’s then they would come around to save their privileged kid.
Renuka: Oh, what a change. Oh, how you had pleaded for Narsi Reddy’s life in that dalit adalat. And this Raja is just a kid.
Narsimma: In a way I was more of my mother’s boy than my own man then.
Renuka: Oh, how strange life could be. If you were not forthcoming then as your mother’s boy, now you are distancing yourself from me as your own man. But you were your own self when you symbolized the ethos of the Rampur Resolution. Not before and certainly not now.
Narsimma: Maybe, but then they were the early days of the revolutionary opposition. As the course of the struggle made me its leader, am I not obliged to give it a new direction. As a lot of naxal blood had flowed down the ideological bridge, let revolutionary aggression be the new mantra of the movement.