Aniruddha: rolling & crawling

1996. I have reached class VIII by now and shifted to Aniruddha House. My roll number is perhaps the only possession that has remained with me since I joined in 1994 in VIth standard. My uniforms are replaced by new ones to accommodate my growing limbs and my taste of shoes changed from Bata’s naughty boy to some more fancy stuff.
N.N. Kannangoo terrorized most of the hours that we happened to stay in the house, with his famous saying, ‘I will take you for a high jump’. P.K. Jena, our able house master added spice to our lives by elongating after dinner house assemblies running into hours.
That was the year, I learnt to sleep, like a horse standing and ruminating what was being spoken by my house master – his sentences mostly starting with ,‘I have a plan’.

A rare feature of Aniruddha House unlike others was that the building did not pair up with another house to form an enclosed space, termed Quadrangle. Of the seven different Houses, it was Aniruddha house that remained open on one side, countered by barbed wire fencing…Needless to say that it was meaningless for us.

It was just another night in the summer of 1996. Our phase tests were being held and the next day, we had our second language test. Some had Assamese and some had Hindi. I was in room number 2 – a mixed and noisy group of students having either Hindi or Assamese as their second language. The outer most room was room number 1, beyond which the meaningless fencing started. On the other side of my room was room number 3.
A classmate (Rishikesh, 3342) happened to be from room number 3 and he was the only one in his room having Hindi. He came across to my room to discuss studies with other classmates studying Hindi. He happened to sit on a make shift chair made out of a black tin trunk and lean on the iron grills of the window on the ‘jungle side’ (facing the jungle).
I was never good at Assamese and it made no sense to study on that warm and humid night. I went up to Swahi Swamam Jonse, 3257, who happened to be the door keeper and shared my plan to create some fun.

As a precaution, we told everyone about it, excepting the guest (Hrishikesh, 3342), who we wanted to scare. There was another exception named Jyotirmoy Sharma (3299), who was sleeping. So we went ahead to execute the plan. I crossed the barbed fencing, aided by Swahi Swamam Jonse and tip toed towards the backside of the window where Hrishikesh was leaning and let go my hand around his head, through the grill. After a momentary shock, he figured out the prank, and suddenly there was a SHRIEk…..AAAAAAAA, from someone. The first thing that came to my mind was Mr. P.K. Jena and his N.C.C. cane. I turned around and saw my mate climbing the barbed fencing. By the time I crossed it, I could hear P.K. Jena screaming. I couldn’t make it to my room and sat beside Amar (3288) in room no 1, with semi audible heart beats.

Jonse having reached his desk, and with very little time to think, couldn’t come up with a valid excuse when Jena asked him (as he was the door keeper) about the noise. He fumbled as he said ‘Sir chutkule suna raha tha’ (was narrating a joke, sir). The entire room number 2, went over to the quadrangle like sacrificial goats, as I watched them rolling and crawling, sitting in another room.

A later investigation, brought to my knowledge, that the scream came from Jyotirmoy (3299) who was the other exception, and who was asleep when we carried out the prank. How he explained his situation, I reproduce in verbatim:
I opened my eyes and saw a pair of hairy hands coming in through the window from the dark. The scream went off, unknowingly.
Many of those who got punished that night, knows where the prank went wrong. Of those who still do not know, this story might help.