ME & MY WORLD

20th July 2007 morning, I arrived in LH9 along with some other familiar faces. First glance of the big gate and the fountain in front of the admin-block reinforced the existing nice and high image of the college (may be the prejudice pictures of the tri-lettered institution formed at the back of my head made everything look very attractive or rather illusive). Same afternoon met my roommates in Agate Hostel-49 (all from Chennai after the only north Indian guy decided to change the room because of his potting addictions). Strangely I shared very nice time with all of them despite of the “anti-tambism” (don’t waste ur time by looking up in dictionaries coz it’s yet another word restricted to the walls of this great institution) spread by the so called north-indian seniors. But hay; that is not the topic of discussion!! Sorry for the diversion...

Topic starts with my first meeting with the seniors. They made it feel that taking raging is as essential as driving an electric car to help reduce global worming even though no1 gives a damn about the pollution caused by the thermal power plants that produce this electricity (yes, in here ragging is optional. If u opt for ragging, u get to interact with seniors and if u don’t den u don’t get to do the later. But now i know so many seniors who never took the bothering to rag me). Fine, let’s get back to the topic. Ragging!!

The wide range of this classified ragging business included many sub-sections ranging from assigning a pet name to everyone else to doing the most incongruous work possible inside a technical institution. Full shirt (no tuck in, no belt), formal pant, chappals no Dadhi-much style and small hair. Indian army would be nicer. But i somehow managed to wander around in a more comfortable way (of course away for the eagle eyes of my state seniors). Yes, this is state wise ragging inside this 1000 acre realm, don wanna confuse more by going into the details. Back to the topic: Juniors were like the slaves form the British age who are summoned at any point of time to do any shorts of work starting from buying Maggi to taking Xerox (many more things have be excluded for the simple fact that they can’t not be included due to social reasons). Well, this was the easier part of this great ragging if one can ignore the fact that i had to go every day at the 12.10 breaks for supplying snacks to the seniors. I was the so called “Puff delivery boy” with a mere hope that none of the kings will be free at the delivery time so that I can just deliver the order and escape.

Reading the above passage, one might be thinking why I am making a big deal out of these normal engineering college stuffs. But hallo, kahani to avi baki he..... There is this concept of “score” which signifies the number of times u have been slapped. By the end of 6 months my score was 185 (around 60 on the last day itself). Somehow I managed to survive with minor cracks on my lips and went on with the ragging business as everyone was going for it. I just wanted to stay in the group. Mistake, yet another colossal mistake. The group was never mine (wait till the last paragraph).

Huff, again distraction, back to the topic: There were those bizarre days when one particular frustrated and desperate senior would ask me to bring an Intro (needs no explanation) from some cute and sexy girl he saw that day and i wont (believe me there r hardly any girls, forget about any cute girl; this was sure frustration of the guy towards the opposite gender). Guess the result. Scores and more scores...... One of the times i was really frantic with bristling anger (and it showed in the face of that 2nd year guy too). Should not describe this, but it’s the least vulgar thing that can be briefed about. I was shown a contagious nail on the wall. A ring was hanging on it which was even more rusted and contractable. I was asked to envisage and give some description about that pair of junk. Thanks to my awesome mind's eye, it looked nothing other than corroded pair. As usual i was thunderstruck and it pissed off that frustrated freak. I was instructed to visualize that nail and the ring set as Katrina Kaif’s nipples with a piercing on it and was asked to suck it. I stood up and almost slapped him. May be he was petrified for the first time that I might complain to the authorities (which will lead to sure rustication), so he made up his mind to transfer the honor to some1else and make me free. This was nothing; can’t be unabashed to describe the other and rather more embarrassing events. Believe me I lost count.

Let us skip the hard part, ragging over. After FTR (final touch of ragging) my batch mates were all paragons; keen on stopping this violence from the next year onwards. But the summer vacation seemed to expunge all the memories. Soon it was 3rd sem, and we were seniors. Everything had changed. The victim became the culprit. The highest score in my batch was something around 200, but for my juniors had to digest 350. I was kinda left out of the so called group; because I was against this brutality and wanted to keep the slightest peace of humanity intact which I managed to conserve after ragging made me callous. Then my expectation shifted towards those juniors for they will be a little more human. But here I am in 6th sem and no wander, nothing has changed; the guy who slaps most is applauded for holding up the guardianship of the great tradition. I prefer now to stay inside my room and not say anything. Luckily managed to make some friends in the next hostel who never opted for ragging (unlike me who chose to be ragged never to rag any1), time passes well when we talk about cars and engines. But in here it rather feels like that frog who is trapped inside the well but can’t afford to move out. But 1 thing for sure, life in this group (formed on the basis of ragging where i never belong) taught one thing. Do not expect... Man has no originality. The most established and static thing is transformation and change. With a slightest of chance the Prey becomes the Predator and the cycle continues. . . . . . . . .