The rules of the game

After I returned from the hospital, I didn't have to wait too long before I had my first brush with seniority at SSP. At around 12 am, the entire Patel House freshers were ordered to get down and stand in a queue at the back of the house. A typical queue would be in 'threes' with the shorter kids in the front. Suddenly our House Captain Arup Ghosh came out from his room and asked us to be on our knees, and start haunching (leaping like frogs). We were all jumping, and after around 10 minutes of haunching, we were asked as to who had kept a certain cheat abusing his classmate, Siddhartha, in the dustbin!! He seemed to be pretty sure about the guy was among the freshers. I had no clue what was going on as I had spent the last few days before with high fever in the hospital. I asked for an excuse, and the Arup'da was kind enough to leave me.


This episode continued for the next few days in the week. At times it was haunching; sometimes it was vaulting, or just kneeling down for 30 minutes. We as a batch had really no clue why should anyone keep an abusive cheat for a senior. But it was probably just for fun to acclimatize the boys into SSP mode.


Everyday after the dinner, it became a kind of routine for the next two months for the Class VII seniors to teach and train us on the SSP manners, etiquettes and parades followed by frequent tests and obvious punishments if one dared to divulge a bit from the norms listed out.


Like any other group with mix of baddies and goodies, there were few notorious seniors too from each class, notable one being Subhadeep from class VII whose elder brother also happened to be in class XI in the same house. So he had a bit of liberty to fool around others. He used to frequent our rooms and repeat his trademark dialogue "Bloody you'll face the consequences after DP (Durga Puja)". So we had an unwritten timeline set to mould ourselves as per SSP norms.


While class VI was excused from many of the rules, class VII was unofficially known as the servers of the school. Well, this server has got nothing to do with the server in this computing age, but it reflected that class VII was the slave of the school. It was their duty to get waters, milk, rice, dal and whatever fancy that was caught by the seniors. And if failed, the consequences at times used to be severe.


In the Dining Hall, we had the rules whereby class VII from each house used to act as Serving Boys for a day for that house. So a typical game of serving used to be something like this:

- As soon as the school bell rang, run to the dining hall at the earliest. If the door is open, serve the rice on the plates of the respective house boys, and pile up the empty rice bowls at the counter. If the door is closed, try to be at the first so that you can beat the other house servers in reaching the counter to get rice for your house cadets.

- Once the rice bowls are refilled, place them again on the tables and wait for seniors to call you and ask for rice or dal or vegetables. So while others enjoyed their food, the servers were supposed to just wait till everyone finishes. Else if the Prefects or House Captains were kind enough they would allow the servers to have food once they feel that the remaining house boys didn't need certain stuffs.


The Dining etiquettes were true to the manners followed at the Defence Institutions. Upon entering the hall, the students would stand against their seats without touching the food. Once everyone is in, the School Captain would strike the glass on the table thrice and the entire hall would go into a silence - we called it Grace. Then the Captain would pray by saying "Thank God for what we are going to receive!” Soon after, the guys would pull their respective chairs to sit and tart having food. Upon completion, people would again wait for such a 'grace', and this time it was "Thank God for what we have received!” If anyone had failed to finish the food in the stipulated time, he was supposed to seek permission from his seniors (preferably Prefect or House Captain) to continue having his food.


Like any other institutions, we had our days of celebrations like Republic Days, Independence Days and several other Indian religious occasions whereby we were served with special foods. Independence Days used to be special coz' it was the Class XI seniors who used to serve the food at the Dining Halls.


Among the most memorable instances, one of the most happening used to be the snack times. The day's 'Server' was supposed to collect snacks from the Dining Hall and place it on the bed of every fellow housemate. Few were the days when people could actually collect their respective snacks from their beds, for obvious reasons. Any at times one would be lucky, he would collect the snacks of the entire house and have fun with his fellow friends.