The dark arts. Black magic. Witchcraft. Voodoo. Necromancy. The names for the practice are many. Its believers legion. Its defenders resolute. It’s not uncommon to hear people from diverse parts of the world talk about spells and curses and evil eyes. It is understandable if superstitious folk without a grounding in science persist in believing in hoodoos and jujus. But how would a sceptical and sophisticated science teacher react to the possibility that someone was trying to put a hex on him? That is exactly what Mr. Miller Green and I set out to discover.
Mr. Manoj Kumar is probably one of the most rational, well-informed, and sophisticated teachers at the Winchester School. In addition to being an accomplished science teacher, he is also the school’s Exams Officer, a job he carries out with great aplomb. He made the perfect target for our little prank. (Yes, students, even teachers like to have fun at times. We don’t spend all our lives marking, you know!)
On Sunday 13th June, Mr. Manoj came to school with a tune on his lips and a song in his heart. Two days earlier, he had successfully completed conducting the IGCSE exams and was all set to settle into his new post as Head of Sixth Form. There was not a care on his sleeve. Life couldn’t be rosier. But little did he imagine that in three short days his bliss would be shattered and his peace of mind would be rent to pieces.
When playing any good prank, it doesn’t do to raise suspicion. We decided to set the prank in motion by starting in a small and unobtrusive manner: Mr. Green and I embarked on our caper by placing a handful of dried, dead rose petals on Mr. Manoj’s desk when he wasn’t around. When Mr. Manoj returned to his desk he assumed the petals had perhaps been placed by one of his year 11 students wishing him farewell. (It is beyond me why he thought a student would want to give him dead petals as a way of saying goodbye!)
He thought little of it and the day passed uneventfully. On Monday 14th June, I assiduously prepared a sheet of paper that had some cryptic writing in an ancient script. It was ostensibly meant to be a curse in an ancient language and was duly decorated with pictures of a rooster, a bat, and a frog. The eerie green paper on which the message was printed was creepy enough to send a shudder up even the most hardboiled sceptic’s back. When Mr. Manoj wasn’t in his room, I placed this green paper with the curse/spell/hex on his desk.
Mr. Manoj, came into his office later in the day and discovered the piece of paper. He tried to read the note but couldn’t recognise the script and so assumed it was a love note in Russian. (Why he thought love notes would have pictures of roosters and bats is, once again, beyond me.)
Tuesday 15th June arrived. It was time to shift gears up a notch. Once again when Mr. Manoj wasn’t in his room, I placed a fern leaf on his desk with a quick sketch of a pentagram. (The pentagram, as is widely known, is a five-sided diagram of a star commonly associated with the occult.) To his credit, Mr. Manoj crumpled the sheet of paper and threw it away. Mr. Green and I contrived to be in his room, soon after.
On seeing us, Mr. Manoj proceeded to tell us that his computer had crashed and his efforts of many hours to consolidate the final grades had gone in vain. He was quite upset about it. I realised the iron was hot, and the moment to strike was nigh. Quite nonchalantly I said, “Maybe someone’s put a curse on you, Manoj.”
When he heard this his ears immediately pricked up and his eyes widened. He soon divulged the details of all that had transpired over the last two days—the pentagram, the rose petals, the ancient script, the fern leaves…. He seemed perplexed and didn’t in his wildest dreams imagine we were behind it. Mr. Green and I exchanged knowing glances and set about methodically to sow the seeds of doubt in Mr. Manoj’s mind. I told him sinister stories of how fern leaves were used in spells and black magic. Mr. Green narrated chilling accounts of gypsy hexes and family curses. We filled his mind with dark tales of doom. When we left the room Mr. Manoj was a shaken man.
D-day, Wednesday, 16th June arrived; the day that was to be the culmination of our prank. Mr. Manoj, who had probably had a sleepless night, came to school firm in his resolution to find out who (or what!) was behind all this. He made sure he slid his door shut when he wasn’t around. He gave strict instructions to the teachers around to make sure no one entered his room.
But I too had come prepared. After informing the teacher on guard about the prank and getting her on my team, I crept into Mr. Manoj’s room and proceeded to decorate his table with an assortment of herbs, simples, twigs, pebbles, and candles. I also left an Eastern European basket in a corner of his room. It contained a black feather, a garlic bulb, a candle, and some ominous-looking shells. The whole shebang looked quite menacing and appropriately inauspicious. I shut the door behind me and disappeared like a ghost unseen.
When Mr. Manoj came back and discovered the assemblage of unhallowed objects on his table there was hell to pay—especially when the other teachers insisted that no one had entered his room. “How can someone enter and exit my room without anyone seeing them!” he exclaimed in exasperation and perhaps a touch of trepidation. Was it a ghostly being that had come into his room? Was it a spectre from the underworld that had placed the objects on his table? Mr. Manoj’s superb scientific brain was starting to unravel. The teachers around him shrieked and gasped in horror. Was there an evil spirit in our school? Was there a practitioner of black magic doing the rounds? Was anyone safe? A delicious thrill of horror ran up their spine as they all scrambled to exorcise the place and cleanse it of evil by mumbling miscellaneous chants and assorted mantras. Mr. Manoj was flustered and confused and maybe a little scared.
Mr. Green and I then decided that the time had come for us to bring out the big gun, the howitzer that would tip Mr. Manoj’s scientific mind over: we decided to reveal to him our customised paper voodoo doll—complete with sideburns on the face and pins and needles stuck all over. The problem was how to show him this doll without betraying the fact that we had made it.
Who should walk by just then but Nadine, the head girl. “Who are you going to see, Nadine?” we asked her.
“Mr. Manoj,” she replied cheerfully.
Mr. Green and I exchanged knowing glances and almost telepathically agreed on the next course of action. We gave Nadine the voodoo doll in a brown envelope and asked her to give it to Mr. Manoj, saying that a year 11 boy had asked her to give it to him.
Nadine played her part with oomph and pizzazz. Mr. Manoj came rushing out of his office after he saw the voodoo doll. He was breathing fire and snorting brimstones. He came to Mr. Green and me, still believing we were his best buddies and trustworthy confidants. “Do you know, I just got another horrible object!” he exclaimed, clearly agitated. His eyes filled with a mixture of fear and jubilation. “But this time Nadine has seen the boy! I am going to catch him no matter what!” he cried.
“What was the object?” I asked him innocently.
Mr. Manoj was so overcome he couldn’t explain what he had seen. I rushed to his office to get the doll and came back to him. I said breathlessly, “Manoj, there was something else in the envelope.”
“What was there? he asked, with a tone of dread. “Was there a note?”
I whispered, “Yes, there was a note.” (I lied). But I had decided to bring the prank to its timely conclusion. I continued whispering, “The note said, ‘this whole business has been orchestrated by Miller Green and Rohan Roberts’.”
The look of bewilderment and relief on Mr. Manoj’s face was priceless!
To his credit, Mr. Manoj was a good sport and saw the funny side of it. He still claims he doesn’t believe in black magic, but that day we saw a few chinks in his sceptical armour.
