When the Shalimar-Coromandel Express went off track that June evening, ramming into a goods train and killing close to 300 passengers, the destiny of a government school also lurched and changed track. Someone somewhere decided to use Bahanaga Nodal High School in Odisha's Balasore district as a temporary resting place for the dead given its proximity to the accident site. For some reason, the other option, reportedly an industrial unit with air conditioning, had fallen through.

In the middle of death

The classrooms, the verandah, the prayer hall of the school, where young lives would have read, played and prayed every day for many years, now filled up with the tragically mangled dead. They say, in the middle of life, death --- media vita in morte sumus. The Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer famously wrote, "In the middle of life, death comes to take your measurements. The visit is forgotten and life goes on." But at Bahanaga Nodal High School, death had derailed life and the living.

Experiments with truth

From housing the dead, the school came to be known as the “haunted school”. Parents refused to send their children back there. Teachers said they were uncomfortable. One is not sure what the students made of it all, but according to reports they were scared. The chant grew --- "haunted, haunted". At first, the Balasore collector appealed to people's reason, urging them to cast aside "superstitions". He drew attention to the laboratory in the school and said the spirit of science should lead the way. But the chant grew --- "haunted, haunted" --- and finally the decision was taken. The rooms that had housed the dead now were to be torn down and rebuilt. The students of the 65-year-old Bahanaga Nodal High School will now get some new classrooms --- the parting gift of hundreds of grateful dead.