Sher Singh ran his fingers through his thin beard, pulled out some hairs and examined them thoughtfully. After a minute he answered, ‘O.K. I will be in your house in half-an-hour. Ask the others to come too. Tell them to come at different times with books on their carriers; there are bound to be a lot of policemen about.’

A few minutes later, Sher Singh cycled out of the house with his hockey kit on the carrier behind him. In the bag were also six hand grenades which had been lying with him for many months.

All the boys who had taken part in the shooting practice were there; only Madan was missing. Since he was in Simla, and there was no time to waste, they got down to business. The first thing they did was to take on oath of secrecy. They spread out the Indian tricolour flag on the table and put their hands on it. Someone produced a picture of Mahatma Gandhi and set it in the centre.

‘No, not Gandhi,’ said Sher Singh. ‘What has he to do with bombs and pistols? We are not launching a campaign of passive resistance. We will take the oath in the name of our martyrs. Have you a picture of Bhagat Singh?’

The host fetched a card with the photograph of the handsome, clean-shaven Sikh terrorist who had been hanged twelve years earlier and laid it on the flag. They took the oath to liberate their country from foreign rule. Then Sher Singh got down to explaining the line of action. ‘The call is to destroy means of communication,’ he said. ‘A few bridges blown up, a few roads barricaded, and the British Army will be stuck where it is.’

‘How is a bridge blown up?’

They are heavily guarded. We’ll have to kill many soldiers before we can tamper with a bridge.’

‘I have never blown up a bridge,’ replied Sher Singh, ‘but we can learn. We will try our hand on something small and unguarded. I have six hand grenades. I am sure they will knock down one of the canal bridges. Later on we can have a go at a bigger one—perhaps a railway bridge.’ Sher Singh opened his bag and showed them the grenades.

‘What do you do with them?’

Sher Singh unfolded a piece of paper on which he had written down the instructions and read them out.

‘Let us blow up the little bridge near where you shot the crane.’

‘That’s what I had in mind too,’ agreed Sher Singh. ‘It is in a deserted spot. We can test the power of these grenades without anyone bothering us.’

They agreed to go back to their homes and meet in the afternoon outside the city. Sher Singh decided to stay where he was rather than go back home and be seen again by the sentry at the gate of the house.