Many years ago. I was a young and nervous assistant working on a documentary film on the RSS called ‘The Boys in the Branch’ (directed by Lalit Vachani). The film was shot in Nagpur, partly in a sort of ‘commune’ where some young men in their late teens, an elite crop from various RSS shakhas (branches), were being groomed for future leadership within the organization. We also shot extensively within the RSS headquarters, Hedgewar Bhavan, in Mahal, in Nagpur. We interviewed Mohan Bhagwat, who gave a chillingly lyrical account of how a particular game-exercise helped a young swayam-sevak mentally prepare himself for the ultimate sacrifice by linking death to re-incarnation, through a series of calisthenic metaphors and manoeuvres, such that death itself could become a move in a game. During this time, I got to be friends, In a way, with some of the boys. Occasionally, I would spend a night with them in their ‘house’. They would cook, sing, play the flute, ask me about Delhi, about girls, about whether i had any Muslim friends, and what they were ‘really’ like. I never made a secret of what my politics was, or the fact that I had a ‘communist’ upbringing because of my family. But sort of grudgingly at first, and less grudgingly later, they gave me a sort of ‘enemy respect’. More importantly, because I was someone close to them in age, and a total outsider, they sort of trusted me with their secrets. I have never betrayed those confidences, even as I sometimes wondered what happened to some of those who spoke to me, mainly off camera, after the shoots were done.