It was a cold dark night. As nights in hill stations are wont to be. The clatter of dinner plates had faded. A girl suddenly buckled over, clutching her stomach. Charu sighed and looked across the dining hall. She knew the drill. As prefect she would have to escort the ailing girl to the hospital. It wasn’t just any old hospital. In Lawrence School, Sanawar, the hospital sat atop a hill at the end of a 20-minute walk. She left the dining hall, held the girl’s clammy hand and walked up the winding moonlit path to the clinic. The nurse examined the girl and declared that she must be admitted. Which meant Charu would have to walk back alone. Steeling her nerves, she started down the hill at a brisk pace. All she could hear was the wind in the deodar trees and the crunch of leaves underfoot. As she turned a bend in the road, she saw an old woman sitting on a rock. She quickened her pace. The old woman raised her hand and seemed to call out after her. She started running. But not before she noticed that the woman had little potlis tied to her thin wrist.
She reached her dormitory breathless and in a cold sweat. A friend asked her immediately, “Did you see the old woman?”
The old woman was said to be a
Boarding schools naturally lend themselves to stories of the unexplained and incomprehensible. These self-contained worlds, often cut off from urban distractions, are rife in imagination and imaginings. With some of the leading boarding schools of the country over a century old, you can be sure to find resident ghosts of restless founders, unhappy children and, of course, women in white sarees, dwelling within these walls. Nothing can be confirmed and nothing can be denied.
With the boundary between pranks and incidents, imaginings and reality suitably blurred — the list of the unusual is bound to increase. There was the boy who could roll his pupils back into his head — at will — who sent a god-fearing classmate ducking for cover and scurrying for Ayyappa photos. The ‘ghost’ that would wax peoples’ legs at night. And the best story? The Hindi master who would don a white sheet and bang at the piano every Friday the 13th night.
These were the fun tales; the incidents that came with explanations. But there are far more sinister ones. Ruchira Singh studying at Army Public School, in the hill station of Dagshai, was rushing for dinner when the electricity went off. She called out to a friend to wait for her. Her friend using her pet name said, “Wait Kanu, I’ll be there in two minutes.” Her friend came to her and they chuckled about this and that. After that a girl with a torch appeared and asked Singh who she was talking to. “Kittu,” she replied confidently, using her friend’s name. “Kittu and all the other girls are in the common room (a good 100 metres away),” the girl told her. Singh never found out whom she had had that conversation with.
All old boarding schools teem with similar tales that cannot be explained. If Auckland House School in Shimla has a gruff-voiced ghost hollering “Bring back my gold” and a wispy spirit complaining about a leaky roof, Mayo College Girls School, Ajmer, had its woman with ghungroos who chun-chuned through the corridors. If Bishop Cotton School, Shimla, has its renowned Lefroy Ghost, Oak Grove school near Mussoorie had the headmistress/spurned lover who clip-clopped on high heels and the teacher who committed suicide, who peered through the chapel door. Alumni from Assam Valley School, where the boys’ hostel is helpfully built on an old Christian graveyard, report of seeing women in white (surprise!) and erudite ghosts who flip through newspapers after dark. Those from Victoria Boys School, Kurseong, swear that they have heard footsteps — not of man or beast — but of a headless boy. And from St Joseph’s College, Nainital, we hear of the boy who roams the corridors murmuring, “I have to do my homework, I have to do my homework.”
My favourite ‘ghost’ story? That would be of the boy who was dared to visit the graveyard in Lawrence School Lovedale and hammer a nail into the tree as ‘evidence’. Spread across 750 acres, the cemetery lies at one end of the campus. The marble graves shine white in the silver moonlight. The gate with ‘Not here risen’ written across it, creaks in the slightest breeze. While raging adolescent hormones have dared to canoodle amongst these tombstones, others of the less desperate variety do need nerves to enter. The boy sauntered in. Told himself there was nothing to fear. Hammered the nail into the tree. And turned to leave. But something held his jacket. And held it tight. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t turn. He died of fear. He had nailed his own jacket to the tree. (And where have we heard this story before?) Is this true? Is it not? You will never know. Only the tombstones know better.