It was the early hours of the day. I had been sleeping, that is until I heard my bedroom door open. I saw two people entering my bedroom. They were strangers.

I immediately closed my eyes. Assuming that I was sleeping, the strangers, or I must say robbers, started going through my cupboards, then quietly moved towards the door of my bedroom to go out.

Under my bed, I had my cricket bat and my rubber dart pistol. I knew that these robbers had come to rob the house. I slowly picked up my bat and dart pistol, then followed them as they moved out of my bedroom, leaving the door open. I swung the bat with all my might and knocked one of the robber down. As he fell on the ground, he screamed. The other robber turned and saw me with a bad and my dart pistol, which he probably thought was a real one, and started to run.

I became confident that I had knocked one of the robbers down and should not leave the other one, so I ran after him. As I was running after him, I had became worried about my parents, who I didn’t see anywhere in the house.

I picked a phone from the dining table and as I crossed the garden, I dialled my friend, Motisham, who lived a couple of houses away and asked him to join me in the chase. The robber jumped over the main gate of our house and started running on the street. I opened the gate and chased him. At a distance I saw Motisham standing in front of the robber, ready to attack. Just as he was about to get the robber, the robber changed his path and started running towards the other side.

“Get him!” I shouted as we chased the robber down the road, waking up the whole neighbourhood. A few minutes later, all the other neighbourhood children were behind us with their bats and anything else they could lay their hands on. I was the youngest kid among them.

Soon, the robber jumped into a grassy, empty plot and I entered after him. Suddenly, the robber jumped out of the bush and with a rod, he hit me on my leg. I collapsed and fell on the ground. Thankfully, Motisham came there and jumped on the robber and knocked him down too. While Motisham and three other kids were beating up the robber, the elders of the neighbourhood arrived and took charge of the situation. Some held the robber and a couple helped me up and took me to the hospital.

I was taken into the emergency, and thankfully had no serious injuries. After I was treated, they brought me home. Later, my parents told me that when the robbers came into our house, they locked them inside the drawing room and searched the house for valuables. So this was why I didn’t see them around.

I was relieved, but I had a lot of pain. Soon almost the whole neighbourhood came to see me and appreciate my bravery. Then the police also came for further investigation. An inspector congratulated me and Motisham for our brave act, but also advised that we should have taken help from any elder instead of confronting the robbers. He told us that luckily for us, when I had knocked the first robber with my bat, the gun in his hand had fallen down and the robber who ran away didn’t have time to pick it up. He cautioned that we could have been harmed critically, what I had done was brave but not safe.

Published in Dawn, Young World, March 25th, 2023