The Mid Night Cat:Ghosts in Sainik School Goalpara

The ‘Ghost Week’ seems quite an interesting prospect to me and would like to thank Shisir for giving us the platform to share our school memories. Whenever I recall the ghostly incidents in Sainik School Goalpara, a chilling coldness runs down my spine.
I was allotted Udaygiri House and I did the shifting in my IXth standard. A sense of haunted-ness hung in the air, from day one. Seniors took our introductory rounds, while telling us stories about the ghosts that appeared in the House often. I never believed them until that fateful night in December.

I was in my XIIth standard and was preparing for my Board Exams. I used to stay up till late in the night studying. I was in room number 1 and on the other end of the house stood the rows of bathrooms and lavatories. None of the bathing rooms had doors except the one in the extreme corner. It was said that a student had committed suicide in that bathroom, unable to handle the pressure of the sainik school life. It was also said that blood came out from the tape in that bathroom for sometime (I am sure that was just a rumour). Nonetheless, the fact remains that, no one used that bathroom except to wash clothes during the day.

Habitually I always went to the urinal, before going off to sleep during the 1.30-2.00 am time period. During one such nights, I saw a black furred cat staring at me with its eyes glowing in the dark. It would lead me to the bathrooms everyday. This went on for sometime, until on that fateful night, when curiosity got the better of me. I came out of my room and found the cat glowing towards me as usual. I followed it and kept following until it went inside that locked bathroom. Brushing aside the faint fear, I opened the door slowly into that bathroom. The bathroom was dry and empty. The high walls didn’t have any openings for the cat to escape. The cat never appeared again and curiously no one ever spotted the cat in the House again.

There are many such incidents that hang between the real and the unexplainable; will certainly share them some other day.

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.