Dead Firangee's overcoat

Dead firangee’s overcoat

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The months of December, January ,February would be very cold in Barauni Refinery and on the top of that attending night shift would be an ordeal. This happened sometimes in 1974 or so. I was posted as shift charge engineer for running the captive power plant of the refinery. The shift charge engineer would make round of the power plant starting with turbine hall,boile,water treatment plant, fuel oil station etc. These rounds in morning and partly in evening shift during winter was tolerable but in the night shift when temperature dropped to 4 something then taking round becomes a torture. The shift charge engineer is the lonely guy who makes a few rounds to check that all the equipment are running and operators are not sleeping during duty hours.

During winter I found most of the workers and officers would come wearing overcoat for shift duty. On inquiry found out that there was a guy called Bhagat who arranged those garments from Nepal. On checking I found those were to be second hand. To hell with second hand I too ordered one against all protests from my wife, I reasoned with her that such overcoats were not easily available in India and that too I would be wearing during night shift and keep that in my office almirah.

That guy got one grey colored tweed overcoat for me, it looked new. My operators joked with me saying now I too would be wearing a dead firangee’s overcoat. I should be careful that firangee should not claim his coat. No such thing happened to me, no nightmares or shadowy figure looming by the side of me during night shift.

One day I was on my round and reached the fuel oil pump house which was the farthest then, the operator Prasad got up and said, “Anything wrong?’’

“No ,why you ask?”

“One hour back I saw you going to the tank area.”’

“What nonsense! I have come now only.Have you been taking ganja on duty.’” I was irritated. Frankly one hour back I dosed off while reading a novel which I brought to keep myself awake.

Next night while I was taking round of water treatment plant then the operator came running, “Sir, everything is alright. You can see both cation and anion filters are ready after flushing.”

“Yes I have checked the water quality so what is your worry?”

“No sir I saw you near the tank half an hour back so thought something is wrong.”

“You saw me half an hour back? Are you mad, this is my first round.’

I did not bother much but then next week too the same story was repeated, that is seeing me in the plant when I was actually in my office. They remembered me wearing that overcoat walking around the plant. I discussed this with my operators, they advised me to keep Hanuman Chalisa in my pocket. One of them had a spare copy of chalisa and gave that to me.

Next fortnight there was no sighting of me and I was also using the overcoat sparingly. From the shift charge engineers room to the turbine hall there was á running verandah and it was a short walk I so would not be wearing the overcoat while going to turbine hall. My overcoat would be slung on my chair. During one of the  night shifts I was returning from my round of turbine hall walking towards my room, from the verandah one could see the desk of shift charge engineer through the window of the shift charge engineer’s room. I could see someone wearing the overcoat was hunched on my desk. The sight made me to stop on my track, I was getting shivers. I slowly walked towards my room which was adjacent to the main control room. I called out the name of my A grade operator Ansari from the central control room. Both of us stood at the door of my room. There was no one and my overcoat was hanging at the back of my chair as I had left. I was shaken so I went with Ansari to the control room. Was I hallucinating? I called some of the prominent operators for a discussion on this strange happening of sighting me when I was actually not there and then my seeing someone wearing my overcoat hunched on my desk. S P Singh declared everything was normal in my room who in the meanwhile had gone to my room to check.

The big question was should I get rid of the overcoat. I decided to sell off the overcoat to H P Sahay at half price. Nothing happened after that, I started bringing a woolen wrapper which I would wrap around my jacket during night shift. I spent my 3 years of shift peacefully without any abnormal sighting.

I resigned from refinery to join BHEL, during the farewell H P Sahay came to me with a big smile and said, “Sir I am not wearing that overcoat, we never wanted you to wear an old coat so we all planned to fool you in believing that coat was cursed. So the operators at various points were coached to say that they have seen you. That day when you saw someone sitting at your desk, that was me. By the time you came near the room I hid below the desk, Ansari was waiting for your call. I hope you will pardon us for the prank we pulled on you so that you don’t wear someone’s discarded overcoat. We believe that those foreign tourists give these away to the locals who in turn wash and spray essence to make these attractive.”

I let out a sigh of relief as the happenings of those nights would have still haunted me.

I patted H P, I knew he was a mischievous fellow and I had to upbraid him for his naughty actions against our Chief Engineer Subramanium but that’s another story for another day.