Spooky tales of officers

Maninder Singh  

Of all the tales ever told of babus, mandarins, civil servants and the uncivil minority among their diverse ranks, this might be among the spookiest.

An officer who lived in a hill-top bungalow had been a grass widower. The house was surrounded by jungle. One night, amid howling wind and rain, he was surprised to hear a movement, clearly audible in the corridor outside his room. Venturing out bravely, he saw one of the khansamas with a butcher’s knife.

Before the officer could inquire, the young cook lunged at him viciously. Death-defying shouts of the officer brought him to his senses. The blade having slipped from his hand, no damage was done. The boy’s story was that he had been troubled by a ghastly presence, which had made an appearance again that night. Armed with a cleaver, he had slept fitfully till the apparition aroused him. Rushing towards the wraith, he had stumbled upon the officer and mistaken him for it.

Flying mammal

In a mine-rich district, a deputy commissioner usually slept uneasily. On a winter night, the mist from the adjoining lake crept “on little cat feet” around the stately bungalow. The DC was woken up by an eerie silence. From out of nowhere, a thunderstorm broke over the sleeping district. As the rain lashed and the lightning drew the jagged characters of an unknown script, the windows of the DC’s room were rudely blown open.

The light had been snuffed out with the first flash of lightning and the patter of raindrops on the silver roof of the edifice reminiscent of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables. As the horrified officer looked on, a bat that had flown in undetected, through the open windows, seemed to have all the signs of a spirited spectre. Having heard tales of doomed romances and unhappy ends in the colonial mansion, the DC took his pistol and shot the unfortunate flying mammal. The tale of the slaughtered bat baffled the sentries no end. Only the DC’s wife remained privy to the wildest of his fanciful fancies. 

Haunted house

There were many Inspection and Dak Bungalows which were rumoured to be haunted. One of these, in a far-flung district, strangely a singleroomed structure, had been the site of a tragedy. In the days of the Raj, a young woman had blown her brains out, it was said, due to her husband’s wildly-wilful Heathcliff-like ways.

Stories were frequently told of swaying beds, bells that rang mysteriously in the night, and blood-curdling cries. A young police officer, who had reached there one evening discovered that a minister had also landed up unannounced. The minister’s staff and the officer’s personal security officer slept on mattresses in the outhouse. The queen-size bed in the sole room was shared by the junior minister and the officer.

In the fastnesses of the night, as the roof shook, the floor-planks creaked and someone seemed to be alighting through the sooty chimney of the old fireplace, the officer and the minister were glad of each other’s company.  In the adjoining outhouse, the staff slept unawares. Such magical and charming slivers of existential time were only meant to be experienced by their masters.

Some of us may wonder whether, in such vivid moments of fear and magic, “beneath the starred and leafy sky”, when ghosts seem to abound and phantom presences appear to make prescient gestures, officers metamorphose into infinitely more god-fearing beings.