‘Halt’.
Light bandh karo.
Baahar niklo.
Aage badho.
Hands up!
My parents would look at me with amusement as I would play-order these ‘curfew words’ acting like the CRPF personnel who were in real action right below our apartments in Imphal. The paramilitary forces assigned at a security post just a few metres away from our building would stop every car and exercise the security drill, checking permits, etc. That was the only source of entertainment then for us and our neighbours, holed up in darkness and without any supplies, not even water, for almost a week. I was barely 7. Imphal was burning. A local militant outfit was on streets burning down marked buildings and shops with a violent war cry – ‘Mayang Halo!’ meaning, ‘Foreigners go back!’ Strangely enough, right inside an Indian state, our neighbours, and we, two middle-class harmless Bengali families, qualified as ‘foreigners’.