Examination

"I will wake you up at 4 in the morning," continued karthick adjusting his spectacles, smilingly, "so that you can prepare well for the exam". I thought it was a good idea and asked, "are you sure you will wake me up at 4?". Sitting on his cot, " even if i die now, I will wake up to wake you up at 4. Don't worry" removed his glasses and handed it to me and continued, "please keep it in the shelf and turn off the lights".

Only a very few had mobile phones in our hostel and smartphones hadn't been invented then so we had used clocks. In our room, we had one little time piece, which belonged to our friend Praveen. I took it and while setting the alarm, I said Karthick, " let's place our cots together, which will make it easy for you to wake me up when the alarm sets off". He agreed to my suggestion and we moved our cots together and we went to bed.

While lying down, I thought, what if our alarm was not loud enough to wake him up, which shook me and I sat on my bed. Suddenly an idea flashed, which was to go to my friend Balaji's room, which is located adjacent to our room.

I got up, "where are you going?", inquired Karthick, still lying on his bed, " wait, I'll be back," as I headed to Balaji's room.

Balaji gave me his time piece after I'd explained him my concern, I thanked him and hurried back to our room.

Karthick looked at me , his eyebrows frowned as he saw the clock in my hand, and asked "what is it for?", looking perplexed. " this is a bigger clock than praveen's and i think the alarm from this one will be loud enough to wake the whole hostel", said I while setting the alarm in Balaji's clock. He didn't say anything and we both went to sleep after keeping both the clocks on the table behind our cots.

I heard a very faint voice and some background music, which I hadn't heard before. With the passage of every second the faint voice and music became clear and louder, I then came to my senses and opened my eyes. Karthick was still lying on his bed but turned towards my side to wake me. I sat up slowly, rubbed my eyes with both my palms. Karthick said, "turn off the alarm, buddy, I need to sleep". I reached to the table, took the clock in my hand and pressed the button on it's top. The alarm was still on and i pressed on the button again, it still was on, I pressed the button again and it was still on. I was surprised and confused. It was still on and pretty loud too.

Karthick, lying on his bed, said " buddy, turn it off, I can't sleep". "It is not turning off" said I, looking at him, holding the clock with both my hands. "Press the button properly", said he while covering his head with his blanket. I kept on pressing the button but in vain.

Karthick threw his blanket open, grabbed the clock from me, and pressed the button. It didn't turn off! He increased the frequency of pressing the button but still it refused to go silent. Frustrated, he opened the battery compartment and took off the batteries but the alarm still went on.

He looked at me, terrified, " something is happening in our room," and looked at the clock now, "I think there is a ghost in our room". I was scared of what he said but i thought of trying once more before screaming or running or whatever the situation demanded.

I kept the clock on the bed and have tried to smother it pressing a pillow over it as if i was killing someone. But the remarkable ghostly clock didn't fudge, which made both of us to shake and we were about to wake others who surprisingly slept despite the noise we and the alarm made.

Then it flashed to us, we were trying to turn off the little clock while the bigger one was still on but was not in the place where I had kept before going to sleep. We scanned the room for the other clock, which was on the floor behind Praveen's cot. Before going to bed, Praveen took Balaji's clock from the table, leaving his own doubting whether it would wake him up as it is a smaller clock! Crazy we both had same idea but it was the smaller one, which woke us up!

We laughed our wits off for several minutes before getting back to our senses.