They were taken, one by one, to a room that would accommodate all of them. By this time most of them had guessed that the camp was a small one for Indian Air Force prisoners only. Some of the able-bodied, who had been captured earlier than Dilip, had already been taken outside to a courtyard where they could warm up in the sun and get some exercise. But on Christmas, all twelve, even the injured, were brought together for a party. Dilip found that he knew half of them. Two were his batchmates. He had trained at the flying academy in Jodhpur and again in Secunderabad with Flight Lieutenants Tejwant Singh and Jawahar Lal Bhargava. There was Singh, the only obvious Sikh in the group, with his dark beard and neatly tied white turban. And there was Bhargava, known as Brother Bhargava by all his mates—his high forehead was thrust back as he listened to one man after another and called each one ‘brother’. But it had been a long time since his training days, and Dilip had been posted with some of the others, too.
