There were no remnants of the past left here anymore. Neither was the queen mother alive, nor did anyone know where her youngest son was spending his old age or in what condition.
Now, each day dawned here with these enthusiastic young players, and their days were filled with energy. All these young men were being trained in shooting. They were being prepared for various small and large competitions both nationally and internationally. It was an entirely different, carefree world!
The younger boys, in groups of three, were kept in one room. Some older youth shared rooms in pairs, and players older than eighteen were given separate rooms. The trainers occupied the ground-floor rooms, and in one of the open, spacious portions at the back lived the chief trainer.
That afternoon, two boys from the mess were peeling garlic, their legs hanging over the back wall, joking around while doing their work, when they heard a noise from one of the rooms.
"Hey, what's that sound? Who's there? This is the time when everyone should be out on the field for training. Who’s in the room, and what are they doing?" One of the boys jumped to the veranda to check.
He found that one of the boys from the camp was moving his bedding to another room. When asked, the boy explained that his partner had developed some skin disease, so he had been asked to stay in a separate room.
It reminded the mess boy that earlier in the morning, when that same boy was sitting at the table drinking milk, he had noticed some dark spots near his ear and on his cheek. But no one paid attention. After all, when these young men were working tirelessly day and night to become national-level athletes, who had time for such minor things? They fell and got injured every day; it healed. Who paid attention?
Everyone's focus was solely on who would get the next opportunity to compete and who would bring back gold, silver, or bronze from which competition. Their lives moved like an electric current.
The incident was forgotten.
On a hot summer night, one of the mess boys, who had been sleeping on the balcony of the Baradari, woke up. No, he wasn’t thirsty. He had woken up because of a sound he had just heard.
He saw a shadow pass through the veranda and move into the gallery.
It must be someone! What did it matter to him? There was no danger here. There were no women or children living here, and no one had any valuable belongings. There was no fear of theft, nor any other kind of untoward incident.
Each room housed some of the most robust men. Even the name of such men would scare away any thief or robber from entering.
The boy turned over and went back to sleep.
But in the morning, when he saw one of his fellow mess boys laughing while preparing hot water, he went over with a questioning look on his face. The boy, suppressing his laughter, told him that the junior officer had been scolding one of the boys while he was rinsing his mouth.
The officer was saying that during his rounds last night, the boy wasn’t in his room.
The boy kept repeating that he had been there, and the officer must have missed seeing him.
"Don't lie! I saw you myself when I was returning. You were coming out of another room. What were you doing there?"
The officer asked so sternly that the mess boy couldn’t hold back his laughter and ran away to tell the others.
"Let it go, what’s it got to do with us..." saying this, the boy went back to warming the milk. He muttered, "He must’ve gone to pee!"
"No, the officer said he saw him hiding there, and the boy was coming out of the other room."
"Whose room was it?"
"The other officer's! The boy laughed again."
"Then what? The officer must have called him for something."
"At 3 AM? In the dark?!"
