The Carmel Garden MHSS Blog!!!

Friday, January 13, 2006

The Skeleton Room

All of you guys must remember "the skeleton room"! That is the room that was in the small building housing a water tank between the First Standard Building and the Higher Secondary(of long back! The whole layout is changed from 2004) The room where late kitaan used to keep his belongings and which was an electricity control room of sorts. Our(my batch and below!) good ol' seniors used to scare us by telling us that there was a skull or a complete skeleton inside that room.

All of the tiny graders used to scurry off whenever we came across the open door of the building! So funny to recall everything now!

Also, the lower kindergarten and younger standards teachers used to keep pupils under control by scaring them that there was a huge dog that was tied up in a Dark Room near the Games room and that they would throw us into the room if we were upto any type of mischief. The actual location of the room was a mystery, But courageous young kindergarteners would look into every room around the games room area. There was a dog, but not of the type that was used to keep us in line! But the scare was enough to keep us in check! I really dont know what they tell now to keep the students in check, Rhinos in the staffroom maybe!(no pun intended)


Come to think of it, there was a good ol' carpenter named Pete or Peter, Dont know what happened to him, During many of our investigations to find the mising Dark Room, we'll go near his residence(behind the former canteen near the ground) and he always used to shoo us off, going to such lengths as to throw pieces of wood at us!(I'm not sure if I remember this part correctly, Could have been a whacko classmate too!!)

I even remember those reddish orange gulmohar flowers embracing the former canteen in a warm hug, with students scurrying to buy samosas and whatnots in the small window of the canteen. Staff used to get first preference and they used to sit right inside the canteen. Some of the students who made friends with the canteen guy used to use the narrow escape at the side, the door near a huge tree to get express orders! The mad rush was not because of the time constraint that our fifteen minute break imposed on us, but it was rather the shortage of "pups"(that triangular samosa, not anything else, you dirty guys!) and other eatables that would get over soon!!

Some girly guys even used to pick up some of those flower buds and make "nails" out of it! Pasting them on thier hands!!

After school, usually we used to play games in the ground. That was a different story, We actually had to shell out a few coins to get a "Ball", be it a football or a basketball or a volleyball! And that too, only a few known people had that type of authorization!!

Volleyball was a very good past time that the Higher Secondary Students always had a hold on, maybe all of them(us - at the time that I am thinking, I am a smaller chap), maybe all of them had put on weight and had some difficulties playing other games that required some extra movements of the limbs. Or maybe they just would not take the risk to tire themselves out as they had a monotonous study session up ahead for the Grand Finale in the end! But volleyball was a game that the twelfth standard had a hold on! Many younger chaps would wait upto 4:30 or so to just play a game after the senior annas have finished!

Cricket was allowed, but using the BasketBall posts as stumps were banned as students regularly broke the shell apart when playing with "Cork" balls. Hand Cricket was allowed though!!

After playing, water at the taps.. Nice and cool!!

Games period!! Getting beated up red and orange on the underside for not wearing the proper uniform such as absence of Canvas shoes, Shorts(though full lenght trousers were allowed in the higher standards due to.. hmmm.. Never mind!) People used to stand in line, then according to some rotten schedule, each house got to play some game. After that, our beloved Kulandhaisamy master or Lazer or the late Vincent Master would blow the whistle. Some rules were imposed during our last few years, like a first whistle would announce stop of play and we were supposed to stay put at the same place, a second whistle to form a line and a third to start running towards the main gathering! Then there will be the queue with one half going to the restroom and the others to the water tap. During my time there, there was a funny incident when Master L in some thought said "Go for water, Drink Toilet", Loud guffaws could not be suppressed and everybody burst out laughing much to the chagrin of the staff!! Ha ha ha ha!! :-)

Nice memories, And to top up all of it, I found a few CDs of mine, some three years old, having quite a lot of photographs of my batch, Found a photograph of my batchmates taken during the the Sports Day Celebrations, someday in August 2002! I'm the first Britto guy at the bottom if taken from the left! Click on the image for a larger preview! Enjoy!