Month: May 2016

My earliest memory of Burn Hall is of an afternoon somewhere in March of 1981, when the bursar told my mother she could leave as all paper formalities were now complete. That being my day at school I was shown my dorm and my luggage placed in a metal cupboard. It was a new building that smelled of fresh paint and I still haven’t forgotten the smell, somehow :-). It was mid March and the weather was still cold, by evening I had gotten to come to know a few of my dorm mates. It was an uneasy start for a first time boarder, the old boys chatted casually while we new comers stayed quite. The first night I wept silently in my bed and I could hear a few of muffled sounds of my dorm mates sharing my predicament. Next morning I remember being woken up by someone knocking at the window with loud calls, “Shaba Shaba Shaba, hurry up!” Strange as it is after almost four decades I can still hear the sound in my mind. And I remember myself shaking badly from cold in the community bath room, the very first day. Someone remarked jokingly about my state, and I just couldn’t help it despite wearing a gown. So started life that day in March 1981 when I became a boarder in Army Junior Burn Hall, Abbottabad.

Continue reading Memories of Burn Hall Abbottabad