My brother peeks into the living room and excitedly shouts at me, “Come and see. Come and see!” before he disappears as quickly.

I rush out of the house after him barefoot, abandoning my faded G.I. Joes and MRF cars on the living room floor like the scene of an accident. My mother, busy in the garden, calls after me to put my slippers on, but I ignore her as I disappear up the lane. I don’t know what my brother wants me to see, but his excitement is proof enough of something monumental. Who has time for slippers in such moments?

We run up the lane to the crowd collecting in front of our neighbour’s. The crowd is growing denser by the second. We push our way towards the front where men are trying to pry something out of the ground. Whatever it is, looks like it is buried deep or firmly. They work their hoes and shovels on the hard ground, grunting and heaving, sometimes clawing with their own hands. But they are not reckless.

“Careful not to strike it.”

“Dig around it.”

There’s something fragile buried in there…or something dangerous, I think.

Ignoring the bite of the pebbles at the soles of our feet, we try to edge closer to the excavation, but a man cordons us off with his big wide arms before we see anything. It’s our neighbour, and it’s under his hedge the men are digging. “You kids shouldn’t be this close,” he says. “It could be dangerous.”

“What are they digging for?” I ask.

“Is it really a bomb?” my brother asks.

“Possibly. Now back up.”

But we stay where we are. Our neighbour leaves us alone and turns his attention back to the excavation.

Some of the other neighbourhood kids show up. They ask us what’s going on, but we’re as clueless and as curious as them. Some think it might be a dead body buried during ’97 Buailai a few years ago. But that seems impossible as the gunfight had not actually reached our neighbourhood, although we all had to run for shelter one time in the middle of the night. A few of my friends had gone to the BSF camp with their families, and when they later told me of all the tanks and helicopters and jet fighters they saw, I felt bad for missing out. Now I feel like I’m a part of something.

Some of the other kids think it might be guns. There was a stash of guns found a few weeks ago in Mission Compound that people think belonged to the ZRA, hidden during Buailai. My brother had gone to see it, and he later told me they let him and some other kids hold the heavy mud-caked and rusted weapons. Mother hadn’t allowed us to go, but my brother still went anyway, that too, without telling me. I would’ve happily endured twice the beating he got on his return if only I’d also been able to go and hold those guns. The closest I’ve ever been to a gun, or anything associated with it, was when we’d go hunting for empty cartridges in the BSF camp beyond the next village after their training.

I think it might be guns they’re digging for now, but none of us are allowed to approach any closer now.

Then, brrrrrrrr comes a shrill insistent noise of a whistle from behind the crowd, piercing through it, parting the sea of people and carving a path. The BSF are here. They’ve come to take charge of the situation. The sight of them is almost as exciting as whatever might be buried in the earth.

I have never seen the India military so close before even though I’ve snuck in and out of their camp more than once to steal their cartridges. They always zoomed through the village in dusty convoys of olive green trucks on their way to their camp. It was always particularly exciting when they had their guns visible. Sometimes we’d wave at them, and from the open back of their trucks, they’d wave back to us, although they rarely smiled as they did, before they’d disappear up the bumpy road in a tornado of dust.

We stare at their fatigues and their guns with envy, and at their dark complexions and severe expressions with innocent wonder and a little edginess. We learned in school that we are Indians too, but the idea seems odd when those we call Indians stand so close to us. Do they believe we are Indians too?

They march to the site of the excavation. They’re cordial with the men who’ve been digging, conversing in a mix of Hindi and English, with some Paite peppered here and there. The BSF boss man then shakes hands with my neighbour—who I always thought was rude, but I envy this moment. Then, the BSF boss man directs his troops with his hands, no words; and it excites me because we also do it when we play at war. The troops quickly move in position and cordon the area off, ushering the mumbling crowd back behind a line of stoic personnel. And then from behind, two troopers come forward with some tools I’ve never seen before, but they look heavy, military-like, tools I’ll use in my next charge into my fantasy battlefield.

My brother and I stand with our friends behind a trooper with a big gun hanging down his side. My brother’s eyes remain on the dig as the troops continue what our neighbours started. My eyes are on the tall man in front of us, and on his gun, on the grooves and shiny metal underneath the chipping black paint. No mud. No rust. I don’t know what kind it is despite its good condition. All I know, and all I’ve seen, are beaten AKs, single barrels, and airguns; and I’ve touched none of them. What would it be like to hold this one?

I hardly notice it when the troops dig the bomb out of the earth.

There are too many people trying to get a glimpse of it, but they’re saying it’s from the Japan Gaal—the Second World War elsewhere. A mortar bomb. A dud. No danger of it exploding, but better safe than sorry.

They march the bomb away, hiding the relic from common eyes, and load it onto their truck and climb in after it. Even they’re speaking among themselves with a lightness and contained excitement in contrast to their stoic expressions when they arrived. The other troops collect their tools and put them away as well.

After some conversation with our village men, all of the BSF men get into their vehicles, close their doors, and disappear as suddenly as they had arrived.

A few of us run after them in the dust.

The men sitting at the back stare at us, rocking with the truck, with half smiles on their faces. And as the truck pulls away, we wave at them, and they wave back at us.

As we return to the house and turn our G.I. Joes into the BSF and ZRA and our MRF cars into military vehicles, my brother and I carry on the conversation. Although the bomb was in reality no bigger than the length of an adult person’s arm, my brother saw a giant missile with a pointy tip and large flat fins that had travelled halfway across the world from Japan fifty-odd years ago. And as another war resumes in our living room, I put my army fatigue on, give orders to my cadre with only waves of my arms. The enemy approaches. We brave souls march into the fray, all of us Salpha, fighting for our homeland, fighting for our freedom in this never-ending war, sacrificing lives for the greater good, until it’s time for dinner.

There’s a small cut in the sole of my foot. There’s no pain, but I leave a trail of blood from our battlefield to the kitchen that my mother will have to clean up later.